Unwelcome Ties
by Western Blakehawke
Summary: Set after LATR. Ames meets the first human looking transgenic. Alec is reunited with a sibling and takes a road trip. About 10 Ames, 90 Alec! Complete.
1. Default Chapter

11th to 23rd Nov 2003

Unwelcome Ties   By Western Blakehawke.

Set after LATR.  2021.

Ames meets the first human looking transgenic. Alec is reunited with a sibling and takes a road trip.

**Chapter 1.******

             Early evening 

               A wooded area a few miles outside of Seattle.

               Special Agent in Charge Ames White was leading a team of eight, on the trail of yet another transgenic. Three of the agents were carrying heat detectors. Though all were dressed casually, there was no mistaking the fact that they were government operatives.

               "Sir!" Agent Garcia called from twenty five metres to Ames' right. 

               Ames swiftly joined his agent, and looked at the thermal sensor.  "It's in this vicinity all right." He calmly stated, whilst he used hand signals to direct his agents to the transgenics exact hiding place.  _I've got you now!_

               The agents swiftly began to encircle their prey.

               Suddenly, their quarry made a dash for freedom, she raced past an agent and dodged the taser he aimed at her, but in doing so was grabbed by another, who she promptly bit.

               "YEOOOW!" The agent yelled, as he grabbed his injured arm, releasing the transgenic.

               The small transgenic moved a few paces, then stopped short, as she now stared down the barrel of a gun aimed directly between her eyes.  

               "Freeze freak!" Ames ordered. "Michaels, cuff it!"  _It's tiny! Shouldn't be too much trouble, need to muzzle it though…… nah if they're to slow or dumb to move let 'em get bit!_

               The agent whom the transgenic had bitten, gingerly stepped forward still nursing his injured arm. 

               The transgenic did not move, just continued to stare at Ames, an unreadable expression upon her face.

               "Don't even think of trying anything." Ames warned her. _Why is it staring at me so intensely? Why doesn't it attack me, it could easily disable the human it must think me to be? _"Hurry up and cuff it! You can get a Rabies shot when we get back to Seattle!" He sarcastically told his still wary agent.

               "Can I get a shot too, please?" The small transgenic female asked "For Rabies." She clarified grinning. "I should be immune, but best to be on the safe side." She said as she casually allowed herself to be handcuffed.

               Ames' only reply to the transgenics polite query was a quelling glare.

               She shrugged her right shoulder. "Only a thought."

               Ames ignored her. "Get it to the van!" He ordered, lowered his weapon, turned swiftly upon his heel, and stalked away, heading for his car. _Another sarcastic one! What is it with the human looking ones? Why can't they all be like Mule? Nice accommodating idiots! _

               The transgenic looked at the agents. "If I break away from you, he'll explode won't he?" She asked an amused look upon her face.

               The agents glanced at one another.

               "Get moving! And don't try anything!" Garcia ordered. "March!"

               "Sorry suga, I only marched for Lydecker." Using a southern accent she sweetly informed the man as she sauntered, rather than marched between the agents, who had her surrounded on all sides.  "Don't worry boys, I won't run! I'd hate it if he got mad at you'll on account of lil old me." She assured them, still using the southern drawl, an amused glint in her blue eyes.

               Stony silence from all the agents.

             A short while later.

               NSA H.Q.

               Ames White's office.

               "Yes sir, she's apparently the first human looking transgenic to survive birth." Otto Gottlieb reiterated his discovery to his superior. "According to the data that we managed to salvage from Manticore, she was the only survivor of her class, born in um 1992; she's part wolf; uh her designation is X0-378 and she does not have a barcode." 

               Ames said nothing so Otto continued with his report.

              "Apparently she was specially trained by Colonel Lydecker and a Doctor Sandemann......."

               Ames' started at the mention of his father. "Trained for what purpose?" He asked, intensely. _Another 452? Senile old fool! _

               "Uh…..well… the files we have, they don't say sir." Otto replied startled and flustered, at being asked for more details by a man who was notorious for not caring about what the transgenics were designed for.  "Um…. Ah…..All they say is that she was activated at thirteen and has a one hundred percent rating, all her missions were successful." He managed to just finish his report.

               As Ames swiftly stood up, startling Otto even more by his abrupt departure from his office. 

               Ames quickly made his way through the building to the security monitoring area, just beyond the cells. "Turn off the surveillance devices in the newest prisoner's cell!" He ordered, then not needing to wait and see if his order would be obeyed, he retrieved the keys and hurried to the cell. 

               Cell.

               Ames quickly unlocked the cell door and entered the room. 

               The transgenic looked up from where she was seated cross legged upon the bed; she was securely chained at the wrists and ankles, and had a metal collar around her neck, that was secured to one of the cell walls via a five foot long chain.

               "Kind of overkill isn't it" X0-378 asked rhetorically as soon as Ames entered. "It could be worse, least they didn't make me wear a minuscule gold bikini."

               Ames ignored the Star Wars reference, as he glanced at all the chains that Garcia had ordered to be placed upon this particular transgenic.  _Sure is!  "You bit one of my people, what did you expect." Was his rhetorical and sardonic response.  _A freak who references Star Wars, what next!__

               "Michaels' thinks he's gonna turn into a werewolf." X0-378 replied grinning at the memory of the conversation she had had with Garcia and the extremely worried agent after they had discovered that she was part wolf.

               "What?" Ames said, startled. _Of all the idiotic……._

               X0-378 burst out laughing, Ames glared at her, and she quickly regained her composure, but the grin remained, as did the amused tone of voice.

               "Yep! He's one suppositious human!" X0-378 replied. "Started muttering about silver bullets and full moons." Paused. "Cause if he did flip, it'd be an improvement!"

               "Flip?" Ames queried. _Can she turn into a wolf? Is that why she got special training? Is that why fa... Sandemann trained her himself?_

"Turn into a wolf." X0-378 clarified. "I saw this cool show as a kid, about wolves that could turn into humans; they lived as humans, but would flip back to their wolf forms whenever they wanted to!" She became wistful. "I wish I could flip into a wolf, I tried, but no go….."

               "You are going to answer my questions." Ames stated cutting her off. _She can't morph, so why was she so important to Sandemann?_

"OK, sure, no problem." X0-378 replied with a one shoulder shrug.

               "I can make this inter…" Ames continued.

               X0-378 interrupted him. "I said I have no problem with answering your questions. Will you pay attention!"

               Ames stared at her, nonplussed by this helpful attitude from an X-series.

               "What? Just because you had to use torture on other X-series you assume that we're all alike?" Was X0-378's indignant response.

               Ames unthinkingly nodded, still shocked by her attitude.

               "I'm the first of the X's, as I'm sure you know, and I am most certainly not like those hive minded 7's! I am perfectly capable of thinking for myself!" She glared at him. "So I choose to voluntarily answer your questions!" 

               Ames just looked at her still totally taken aback.

               She quit glaring at him and grinned suddenly. "How's C.J?"

               "C.J?" Ames swiftly moved forward and grabbed X0-378's shirt at the neck, hauling her to her feet, standing her on the bed. "Where is 452!" He yelled even though his face was mere inches from hers.

               "How the hell should I know where Max is?" X0-378 responded angrily. "I'm not deaf you imbecile! You don't have to shout!"

               "Where is she?" He asked again, this time quietly, but with even more deadly menace. _I want my son back!_

               "The last time I saw Maxie was a few days before she and the others escaped!" X0-378 told him, in exasperation. 

               "Yet you use the name she uses." Ames softly accused. _You'll tell me what I want to know freak!_

               X0-378 became eerily calm and answered him. "I have known each of the X-series since they were born, I am the eldest after all, I moved from facility to facility with Sandemann, spending a few weeks to a few months at each, every year. I was at the Wyoming facility when Max and the others chose their names; that was fifthteen years ago."

               Ames released her, recognizing the truth in her words, he stepped away from her and unconsciously wiped his hands upon his trousers. X0-378 gracefully sat back down upon the bed retuning to her cross legged position, and just watched him, awaiting his next move.

               _How does she know C.J? Did he travel with father on his traitorous jaunts? _Ames thought, he did not speak for two minutes. Then finally decided.  "How do you know C.J.?" _Damn know I've left myself open to her questions on how do I know him!_

"Sandemann." She replied then paused. "Agent White, I'm part wolf remember, I knew you were his son the instant we met, I recognized the familiar scent…… no pun intended."

               Ames looked at her in shock. _She knows he's my father and about us! What the heck did you do, you senile old fool!  "You know about us?"_

               "Yes, I was your fat….." X0-378 started to reply.

               "Don't call him that! My father died the day he left me, the day he turned traitor!" Ames snarled ferociously, cutting her off.

               "Sandemann's assistant." She continued, only acknowledging Ames' outburst, by referring to Sandemann as Sandemann. "I was his pet project from birth, since I was the only one to survive. He named me at birth, though I also have a designation. The military allowed me to remain with him after they took over, though I still did assignments for them…."

                 She got a far away look in her eyes for a few seconds then snapped out of her memories.  "I had all the training from birth, just like all the X-series; that was in place before the government got involved. Sandemann and Lydecker personally handled my training….."

               "What did he tell you about us?" Ames brusquely asked. _I don't want your life story!_

               "Apart from the boring morals lectures…. he told me about your history, taught me the language etcetera and when I turned six, he gave me the test, even though he knew I was immune he tested me anyways." X0-378 replied rolled her eyes, & pushed the sleeve up her arm to reveal the caduceus brand.  "He even used a kariff, wore a robe and got me to say the words. He reproduced as much of the ceremony as he could." She sarcastically stated.

               Ames just stared at her in shock. _What the hell was wrong with him! He despised our religion yet he re-enacted a vital part, to test this freak! He's worse than senile! He's crazy!_

               "He couldn't teach me the really interesting stuff, about the ancient weaponry though." X0-378 shrugged her right shoulder. 

                Silence.

               "He also gave me really boring lectures on genetics, I um, quit paying attention after the first couple, 'cause I realised he was not going to test me on 'em! I only paid attention to the lectures regarding my own DNA, otherwise I was off reworking famous battles in my head." She grinned with that statement.

               "What do you know about 452?" Ames asked sharply, recovering from the shock of Sandemann's further betrayal. _I don't care that you got the same boring lectures that I got!_

               "Ah…. She was another of his pet projects, um, he called her his special one and he probably told me why, but uh, you know genetics, so I zoned out, only paid enough attention, to nod at appropriate times….. sorry."

               Ames glared at her. _Stupid freak! I know he was boring, but you should have listened!_

               "I can tell you something that's kind of to do with genetics though" X0-378 informed him, fed up with being glared at. "He did not use any of his own or C.J's DNA, to make transgenics…  none of us are related to you."

                 Ames looked utterly relieved.

                She grinned at him, at the relieved expression that he could not help showing.  "So how is C.J, is he still alive, I know he was caught by the Phalanx." 

               "Why do you care?" Ames belligerently asked.

               "Agent White, I never saw Sandemann as my father, unlike Joshua and Isaac, but I did think of C.J. as my brother, so I'd appreciate knowing how he is." X0-378 bluntly told him.

               "He's still crazy and he's safely locked up!" Ames replied equally blunt._ Freaks called him father! That's disgusting! She better not see me as a sibling! I'm gonna hurl!_

               "Have you seen him recently?" She asked.

               "I told you he's safe!" Ames curtly replied. "I'm the one doing the questioning not you!"

               "Hey, don't blame me for doing what I was trained, genetically programmed to do!" X0-378 huffily responded.

               "What, worry about that moron?" He asked incredulously. _She was made to baby sit C.J?_

               "Yes!"  X0-378 yelled. 

               "You can't be serious, I know he was senile, but creating a whole series of freaks to baby sit C.J. is stupid!"

               "I wasn't only born to protect C.J! Why the hell do you think that I didn't disarm you in the forest! I could have, 'cause no way could you have used your true abilities in front of the ordinaries!" She sarcastically informed him.

               Before Ames could reply to this startling revelation, alarms started to blare through out the building.

               "We'll finish this later!" He told her as he swiftly exited the cell, slamming the door behind him, but not before he heard her sarcastic reply.

               "Great!" X0-378 said, she lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. "I wish they'd turn those stupid alarms off!"

                The alarms kept sounding for a few moments then were abruptly cut off mid wail.

               "Thank you!"

               A minuet or so later.

               X0-378 heard the sound of fighting near her cell, she ignored it and continued to relax on her bed, she did not even open her eyes when the cell door was opened.

               "Hello 494." She casually welcomed the person then slowly opened her eyes.

               "Will?" Alec asked in surprise. "Hey the kids we came to rescue said that Ames had caught a ferocious wolf nomlie!" He grinned at her as he came over and started to remove her chains, using the keys he had taken from the monitoring area. "Where's the bikini? You should be wearing a gold and bronze metal bikini!"

               "If I'm Leia, I guess that makes you Jabba!"  Will replied grinning at the younger transgenic.

               "Jabba!" Alec said in a very hurt tone, he pouted. "I'm Han Solo!" 

               The restraints now removed, Will stood up and casually stretched.  "Mmm. Yep Han is definitely more in keeping with your personality." She responded still grinning as she patted him on the shoulder. "C'mon kid quit pouting and lead us outta here!"

               "Hey! I'm not a kid! I'm all man! Well almost all!" Alec replied grinning at the small transgenic. 

               Will just shrugged her right shoulder and continued to grin at him.

               Alec reached into the back of his jeans and removed a gun. "Here!" He said and handed it to her. "Let's go!"

               "I've got your six little brother!" Will replied as she swiftly and automatically checked the weapon's sliding movement, ejected the clip and made a note of how much ammunition she had before she followed him into the corridor, past downed agents, up to the first floor of the building and into the main area, where the other transgenics were awaiting them.

               NSA Command room.

               "Hey guys I thought I'd be springing Hannibal Lector and instead I get Will!" Alec joked as soon as they entered the very large room. 

               Will reacted instantly.

               "Ow! Why'd you hit me?" Alec asked as he turned to face Will.

               "I don't like being likened to Hannibal Lector!" Will told him, with a glare. "Female, not psychotic and vegetarian!" She informed him, as she stalked past him to greet Max and the others.

               "So you didn't bite one of Ames' agents?" Alec sarcastically called after her.

               Will continued to walk towards Max, dodging the fallen agents and ignoring those who were conscious, but chained up, including an incredibly pissed off Ames White and a very apologetic Otto Gottlieb.  "Bit yes, ate no!" She replied over her shoulder. "I hate liver!"

               "Ah who's Hannibal Lector?" An X8 male asked he looked at his X8 and X6 companions who responded with puzzled looks and shrugs.

               "He was a fictional serial killer, who ate his victim's livers." Will calmly clarified for them as she came to a stop beside Max. She glanced down at Ames who was chained up and gagged a few feet away, then turned her attention back to Max. 

               "Will….." Max paused looking nervous not knowing what to say to her oldest sibling, not used to being at a loss for words.

               Alec reached them and gave Max an odd look.  "C'mon Max she doesn't bi…." He paused and started laughing. "Well okay she does bite, but only enemies right?" He looked to Will for confirmation.

               "You went A.W.O.L. Max….. you are rogue, we all have orders to kill you and the other rogues!" Will coldly informed her.

               "Hey wait a minute Will!" Alec stepped in between Will and Max. "Without Max we'd be dead! She freed us!" 

               Will looked coldly at him, even though she had to step back a couple of paces to look directly into the six footers eyes, she radiated power.  "Move now!" She ordered then not bothering to wait for him to obey her command she shoved him aside and grabbed Max, who had quickly assumed a fighting stance.

               The part wolf transgenic easily overpowered the part cat transgenic, engulfing her in a hug.

               "It's great to see you Maxie!" Will stated, grinning as she released her kid sister.

               "Will, you might want to rethink the not psychotic part!" Alec sarcastically told her. This time he was ready and dodged the left hand that came up to whack him, but in doing so he missed the swift movement of her right leg and she kicked him lightly on the butt.  "Quit doing that! You're as bad as Max!" He complained as he rubbed his rear. 

               The other transgenics were having fits at this, especially the X8's, the three other X5's were grinning.

               "Family trait!" Max and Will said together grinning.

               "You're still the same loud mouthed pain you were at Manticore." Will informed Alec. "So what are you called?"

               "Alec." He replied a hurt expression upon his face, from her accurate description of him.

               Will walked over to him and hugged him.

               "Wha…" Alec was now embarrassed and blushing slightly.

               "Alec's blushing!" An X6 female said surprised.

               "Wow, I never thought I'd see you blush!" One of the two X5 males stated shocked.

               "Lay off him okay!" Will ordered her kin. 

               The other transgenics immediately complied; those who had their mouths open to make a comment swiftly closed them, even Max followed Will's directive.

               Having accurately guessed the nature of some of the suppressed comments, Will rolled her eyes.  "I have normal sibling relationships with you all, in that I think that all of you can be pains and have been mightily tempted to seriously hurt, if not kill, a few of you!" She paused and glared at each of the kids in turn then she grinned at them.  "But, I've also protected all of you down the years and that's not going to change just because we're free!"

               Gagging sounds come from Ames White's direction. The transgenics all focused upon him.

               Ames seeing that he now had their attention, tried to talk through the gag.  _I'm gonna hurl! Let me outta these chains so I can kill you! Damn it! I'll make it quick, painless well relatively! 452 I want my son! Give him back to me! Unchain me! Now!_

               "Ames, we can't understand you and we don't give a damn!" Max told the seething agent, before turning her back on him, ignoring him in a very cat like gesture. "Time to leave people! Gizmo have you downloaded the data?"

               The X6 female at one of the computers looked up. "Almost done Max……got it!" She grabbed a couple of disks and stood up.

               The other male X5 walked over to Ames, and looked down at him. "Max what are we gonna do about chained up ugly here?" He asked

               Alec joined him. "You should have seen how he had Will chained! She had a metal collar, with a long chain attached to the cell wall, thinks he's Jabba the Hutt!" Alec sarcastically informed the others.

               Ames started trying to speak again. _Jabba the Hutt! I'll give you Jabba the Hutt! I'll make your death slow and incredibly painful!_

               "Actually Boba Fett is more apt, his director would be Jabba since he pays Ames to hunt us. Ames is just a bounty hunter." Will stated shrugging then grinned. "Working for the evil Empire, hunting down us rebels! Yep he's Boba Fett and we all know what happened to him!"

               "Yeah, but we don't have a Great Pit of Carkoon to shove him in, so that he can be slowly digested over one thousand years by the Sarlacc!" Alec dolefully complained.

               "What are you talking about?" A female X6 queried. 

               The adult X series all looked at the youngsters and saw that all were equally puzzled.

               "They wouldn't have had classes on pop culture yet." The female X5 stated, lightly hitting her forehead with her right palm. "Duh."

               "We'll show you the movie when we get home okay." Max stated, scanning the area, making sure that the unchained agents were still unconscious.

               "Max, they can't just watch Return of the Jedi, they need to watch all of the films to know what's going on!" Alec reminded her. 

               Max glared at him.

               "What, you know I'm right." Alec responded in a hurt tone.

               Ames began speaking again, cursing and threatening through the gag. _When I get my hands on you you'll wish you'd been captured by Fett!_

               Alec returned his attention to the agent. "So Max, what do we do with Boba Fett here?"

               "Better the devil you know." Will calmly commented, not bothering to look at the Familiar.

               "Yeah… leave him!" Max ordered and led the transgenics out of the building.

               Will waited till last, taking up her preferred position of rear guard.  "Nice meeting you." She genuinely and sincerely said, as she looked at Ames for a moment then was swiftly gone, as she caught up to the others.

****

               A short time later.

               TerminalCity.

               Will had been updated on the latest goings on and on the names of those she was travelling with, including how each of them chose or were given their names, Alec skilfully wove the tale of how he became Alec and had Will, Max and the others laughing.

               Max, Will and Alec walked into the command centre at TC.

               "I couldn't have chosen a better name for you Alec!" Will stated still grinning. "It fit's you like a glove!"

               "Will!" Joshua yelled, and raced over engulfing her in a huge hug, that lifted her off the ground.

               "Breath! Can't breath Josh!" Will choked, from amid his steel tight grip, whacking him on the back.

               Joshua quickly released her, and looked at her with his puppy dog eyes, hang dog and apologetic.  "Joshua sorry Will." He said dolefully. "Joshua hurt Will?"

               "No Josh, I'm fine!" Will grinned and hugged him. "Just be a bit more careful of your strength huh!"

               "Okay!" Joshua grinned at her. "Will, you know where father is?"

               "Sandemann? Josh I haven't seen him in about sixteen years! Not since he left Manticore!" Will replied.

               "Oh." Joshua was downcast. "But you were father's assistant….."

               "Josh, if I had any idea where he was I'd tell you." She told him patting his arm as they walked over to some armchairs and sofas and sat down.

               Joshua looked mournful.

               "All I know is that he had to run, because the Conclave had sent the Phalanx after him." Will added.

               "Wait a minute! You know about the Familiars?" Max asked incredulous.

               "Yes, Sandemann taught me all about them, he even gave me their test, when I was six…." 

               "Hey, you got the snake blood dealio too?" Original Cindy interrupted as she came over.

               Max quickly introduced them.

               "Hi." Will said grinning. She appeared to be exactly what she was completely comfortable and not in the least fazed or surprised that an ordinary was among the transgenics, that Max had close ordinary friends whom she had entrusted with her, their secret.

               "Nice to meet you Will! So how many kin does my boo have?" Original Cindy asked as she sat on a sofa.

               "Actual numbers, I have no idea, I kind of got out of the loop after Sandemann left and Deck became preoccupied with hunting the 09ers." Will replied. "Hmmm, well at a guess, I'd say a few thousand."

               "What!" Alec almost fell off the arm of the armchair he was perched on. "I thought maybe a thousand at the very most!"

               Everyone else in the command room was equally incredulous at Will's blunt statement.

               "Yep a few thousand, maybe as many as ten thousand." Will reiterated, looking at those around her.

               Everyone in the room had a shocked or incredulous expression upon their face.

                "Sandemann, started gene splicing in the 1970's because his children kept either outright failing the test and dying or they became vegetables, severely mentally and or physically disabled or crazy. The government caught wind of his activities in the late 1980s and commandeered his research." She informed them.

               "He started in the 70's?" Max echoed, surprised at this new piece of information, she looked at Joshua and Will. "How old are you guys?"

               Joshua shrugged. "I don't know father never say." He also looked to Will.

               "34, Josh you're 34. You were born on the 24th of July 1988." Will informed him with a grin. 

               "24th of July 1988!" Joshua carefully repeated smiling.

               "Yep. Isaac was born about sixteen months later, the government were involved by then hence his barcode and I was born on the 4th of July 1992, I'm 29. Sandemann didn't risk inserting a barcode sequence into mine or the others of the X-0 series DNA, because we were the first of the X series, he was worried that we wouldn't survive and he was almost right." She shrugged her right shoulder.

               All but Alec were listening fascinated by these interesting details.

               "After the government got involved, Manticore as the labs became known began churning out new transgenic types each year, often a few types would be born every year, some of the X series overlapped because of breakthroughs whilst they were in utero. So you have some X's that are different series, but are the same age." Will continued.

               Alec was slightly impatient although he was interested in this new data. "Will, how do you get the ten thousand mark?"

               "Information and then some deductive reasoning." She informed him grinning. "C'mon Alec, think about all the X5's you've worked with, then double them for the clone factor, then add in all the other later X series and their clones, plus other series and nomlies, and the natural twins and triplets. Then add in the total for each facility ……."

               "Yeah, I did start to see a lot of new faces at the Washington facility after the Wyoming one was destroyed……They quickly built a hell of a lot of new accommodation areas….. each new block was completely self contained." Alec paused remembering conversations with others from that facility that he had never met until he came to Seattle. 

               Everyone's attention was now focused upon him.

              "Each new block, was for a facility that had been closed when they decided to move 'em all to Washington….. We were not allowed to mix with those from other facilities even in training. The guards got quite cranky if you acknowledged someone from another block!" Alec had a far away look on his face as he spoke recalling the last few months at Manticore.

               "Everyone was crammed into those buildings and the original ones, the new ones went down five six stories underground they were connected by a myriad of tunnels….." Will recalled.

               "What more can you tell us about Manticore?" Max asked sharply.

               "Why don't I write up everything I remember?" Will suggested. "Then you can use the files whenever you want."

               "Good idea, we'll loan you a laptop to use after we sort out your quarters." Max informed her.

               "Thanks. Any of the other 09er's here?" Will queried. 

               Max looked at her eldest sibling. "Tinga and Ben are dead….."

               Will swiftly got up and went to Max's side, enveloping her in a hug.  "I know Maxie, I know." She quietly stated grief evident in her voice.

               Max tearing up returned the loving embrace. "Ben… I had to…."

               "Shhhhh." Will murmured as she gently rocked her little sister.  "You had no choice, they would have put him through hell. You did the right thing, you freed him!"  Will told her easing back from the hug, she looked Max in the eyes. "You did the only thing you could have, given the circumstances!"

               "How?" Max queried.

               "Deck! He figured out what happened and told me, he was pissed…. Drunk." Will shook her head. "He came home after he found Ben, took care of stuff and went for his stash of alcohol, the stuff he kept for guests and he drank the lot! When I got home, he was a jabbering wreck." 

               The others were looking at her in shock.

               Will had a far away look in her eyes as she recalled the scene. "Took me almost the whole night to get what had happened out of him… then I had to finish sobering him up fast 'cause Renfro wanted to see him later that afternoon."         

               "You lived with Lydecker!" Max was completely shocked. "How could you! He killed Eva! How could you… ugh… with him!"

               Will stared at her then realised the misassumption that her friends family had made.

               "That's gross! He's old enough to be your father!" Alec put in, disgusted.

               "I did not have that kind of a relationship with Deck!" Will replied aggravated. "And even if I did, it would be none of your damn business!"

               "What do you mean none of our damn business! You're our sister! We have a right to criticise your choice of mate!" Alec yelled back at her.

               Both transgenics were now on their feet, in fighting stances.

               "The day I take relationship advice from a tom cat, is the day I kill myself!" Will yelled at him totally pissed off, she was growling, and baring her teeth.

               "Will, Alec, stop, you're family, don't fight!" Joshua pleaded, but to no avail.

               Alec and Will were circling each other, a crowd had gathered to watch the fight, Max was still in shock and just sat on her seat.

               Original Cindy, stood up and got in between the two furious transgenics, who were glaring at each other as they circled.

               "Sit down the pair of you!" She ordered, ignoring the glares that they now turned upon her, she whacked the both of them. "Sit! I aint gonna tell you again!"

               Will and Alec looked at the angry ordinary, Will shrugged her right shoulder and sat back down, Alec followed suit, and sat as far away from Will as he could.  The other transgenics drifted away, disappointed that there would be no fight.

               Original Cindy returned to her seat.  "Thank you! Now you are going to discuss this like adults, not like three year olds!"

               "I lived with Lydecker, it was a platonic relationship." Will, eerily calm, and now totally collected, paused to stare meaningfully at Alec. "Joshua had the parental bond with Sandemann, I had it with Deck. Though I did not call him father or any of the paternal names, he allowed me to call him Deck in private. When I wasn't travelling with Sandemann, to the other facilities, I lived with Deck. Neither of them would explain why I did not live in the barracks, like the rest of you."  Will leant back in her armchair and relaxed, not caring what the others thought.

               "Oh well okay then." Alec replied shrugging. "I'm hungry, how about you?" 

               Will burst out laughing. "That's why I've always had such a soft spot for you Alec, one minute I want to kill you the next you make me laugh!" She told him, grinning. "Come to think of it I could use some food."  She stopped grinning and looked at Max. "He wasn't all bad you know Max…. Did you know that they caught Zack, that he allowed himself to be captured, so that others could escape?"

               The others stared at her in shock for the third time that night.

               "But, he was free, he found me....?" Max said bewildered.

               "She's telling the truth Max, Zack was captured, but he escaped, scuttlebutt I heard reckoned he had help, but psi-ops couldn't find the traitor, so the brass figured he must have escaped on his own." Alec told them then looked questionly at Will. 

               Will shrugged her right shoulder.

               "It was you! But how?" Alec asked in confused astonishment. "Psi-ops tested everyone who was on the base! They must have scanned you!"

               Those in the command centre again starred at the new arrival.

               Will rolled her eyes and sighed, then stretched and altered her position in her chair; she pushed off her cowboy boots and brought up her legs, so that she was now sitting cross legged.

               "Did you free Zack?!" Max asked impatiently.

               "Yes." Will quietly confirmed.

               "But psi-ops…." Alec queried again.

               "Apparently Sandemann never bothered to inform anyone that I was, am immune, to psychic probing and tricks." Will stated impassively, shrugging again.

               "But…." Alec started.

               "I played along whenever I was tested, pretended to have the correct reactions. Deck suspected, I think he knew that I was the one who freed Zack, because I didn't like what they were doing to him. But apart from glaring at me and giving me a lecture on loyalty to Manticore blah, blah, blah, he let the subject drop and never told anyone of his suspicions."  

               Max nodded, not liking the fact that Will did not have a problem with Lydecker, in fact saw him as a father figure, but respecting her still and the fact that Lydecker knew of Will's involvement in Zack's second escape and did not report it…. 

               "Great! Mystery solved! Now can we go eat!" Alec whined as he stood up and not waiting for a reply headed to the mess hall.

               Will slipped on her boots and stood, Max, Original Cindy and Joshua also stood up and they followed him, pausing only to get a laptop for Will's report, they hurried after Alec.

                Mess Hall

               Will had been introduced to everyone that they met. They sat together at a small table in a corner.  After their meal as they sat drinking coffee or milk and relaxing Joshua recalled something.

               "Max, Will also probably help you 09ers, then you escape." He firmly stated

               "What?" Max asked puzzled.

               "Will can talk to dogs in here." Joshua said pointing to his forehead. "Talk to Joshua and Isaac too."

               "You can?" Alec was astonished then he eased slightly away from Will, enlarging the gap between their seats. "Only canines or mostly canines right?"

               "Yeah so relax Alec, I'm only telepathic with those who have a huge amount of canine DNA." Will confirmed grinning at him.  As usual Will did not show her teeth, since being part wolf she considered showing teeth to be a threat.

               "Will was in Wyoming when 09ers escaped, Will help them?" Joshua asked.

               Will shrugged her right shoulder. "I did ask the dogs to only pretend to be hunting properly, they agreed."

               "I always wondered way a dog took his handler straight past me." Max said in astonishment. "And when I escaped the Washington facility?"

               Will nodded.

               "Will not allowed to see Joshua and Isaac after father left, but she still talked to us." Joshua told his friends then looked sad at the thought of his little brother.

               Will stood and moved round the table to Joshua and hugged him from behind, whilst O.C., and Max hugged him from either side and Alec patted his hand.

               "He's in a better place big fella." Max gently told the gentle giant.

               "Yeah he's in Elysium." Will added knowing that Joshua would get the reference.

               "Where only the good and most noble go." Joshua smiled happily at the thought. 

               "Yes." Will confirmed then sat down again.

               Max and O.C. also broke the hug and they returned to questioning Will.

               "So how come no one tried to stop you from telling the dogs to let the kids escape?" Original Cindy queried.

               "We no tell what Will can do we promised not tell even father." Joshua explained.

               "All they knew was that I had an affinity with canines, nothing more." Will explained. "I first talked, well communicated in pictures with a dog when I was a few weeks old, she was an alpha female and warned me through pictures not to tell the other two legs that I could talk to her kind."  Will paused recalling her beloved canine kin. 

                "The dogs were quite happy to chat to me, but also worried about me, particularly the alpha male and female, they adopted me as their pup, I got the same reaction from all the dogs on all the bases." Will shrugged again she was not used to discussing her canine family.

               "Okay now Will don't take this the wrong way, but how come you aren't and never have been considered a nomlie?" Alec cautiously asked her.

               "You mean because all the X's after me before you 5's were considered to be nomlies?" Will queried.

               "Yeah." Alec confirmed.

               "I have no idea why I turned out okay and none of the others before they got to the X 5's did, why it worked perfectly with me and not the others, why none of my siblings survived birth." Will shrugged. "I'm a fluke."

               Alec opened his mouth to speak and guessing he wanted more information Will added.

               "That's the only reason that Sandemann and all the Manticore scientists could come up with, with all the tests they performed on me, all they came up with was, I'm a fluke."

               "Will did Sandemann hire Lydecker or was it the military?" Max queried.

               "Sandemann tracked down Deck a couple of years after the military cashiered him." Will replied. "After the government took over they reinstated him at his old rank of colonel etcetera, he was already directing much of the labs overall work, leaving  Sandemann free to play with genes."

                She shrugged anticipating the next question she added. 

               "The government just made the title of director official, they preferred to have one of their own, even someone that they had had to cashier, in charge to a civilian, Sandemann did not seem bothered by this."

               "Renfro let you stay in Lydecker's place after he left?" Alec asked this had been puzzling him.

               "She had to it was part of my cover for assignments." Will told them bluntly. "Oh I behaved like a good little soldier towards her, but I'm pretty sure she knew that I didn't like her."

               "Did anyone." Max quipped sarcastically.

               Will grinned in response.  "You know, she always had five or six X5's with her whenever she had to speak to me." Will casually informed them.

               This set them all to laughing, knowing how scared Renfro must have been of Will and the fact that she had to have bodyguards when she dealt with her, must have really annoyed the Manticore director.


	2. Chapter 2

11th to 23rd Nov 2003

Unwelcome Ties  By Western Blakehawke.

Set after LATR.  2021.

Ames meets the first human looking transgenic. Alec is reunited with a sibling and takes a road trip.

**Chapter 2**

               A few weeks later, before the events of Freak Nation.

               Early evening.

               Will's apartment in downtown Seattle.

               Will returned from her work as a translator, for an import/ export firm. As usual she was attired entirely in black. When she occasionally wore a different colour it was always either dark green or dark blue, at least one item of her apparel was always black. 

               She had just sat down when her cell rang. "Will Wolfe." She answered. "Hi Logan." Listened. "Sure I'll be right over!" Will hung up the cell, grabbed her black leather jacket and gloves and headed for Logan's.  She liked him, could see why Max had fallen for him. She only wished she knew how to cure the blasted virus.  

               She raced to the apartment building's underground garage and hopped on her new state of the art black motorbike, like all her kin she didn't bother with a helmet. 

               "X series transgenic, black leather jacket, motorbike….. It's become a cliché, but I couldn't resist, must be genetic!" She muttered to herself as she rode.  She heard a helicopter. "Man I miss flying! Hmmm wonder if I could sweet talk someone into letting me borrow a plane or a copter, heck I'd even ferry passengers if it meant I could get in the air again….. I'll have to look into that tomorrow."

               She swiftly arrived at her destination 

               Sandemann's old house, Logan's new home.

               She parked and swiftly moved to the front door, which opened before she had the chance to knock, she entered.

               "Hi Alec, so Logan called you too huh?" Will asked as they moved into Logan's study.

               "Yep! If you need a job doing, if no one else can help and if you can afford him you call ALEC!" Was his smugly silly reply.

               Will rolled her eyes, knowing that with Alec in this type of mood that it was gonna be a long night!  "You misquoted." She dryly informed him, they were both ignoring Logan.

               "What?" Alec replied confused.

               "The quote is…. 'If you have a problem, if no one else can help and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-TEAM'" She responded grinning.

               "Ahem!" Logan said, trying to get their attention, he waved the large envelope he was holding.

               Both immediately focused upon him, playful banter forgotten.

               "So what's the job Bosley?" Alec asked as he casually seated himself upon Logan's desk corner, only to hop off again at Logan's glare and pointed look at the vacant seat next to Will's. Grinning unrepentantly Alec took that chair.

               "You've been drooling over Farrah Fawcett again, huh Alec." Will rhetorically asked, grinning. 

               "Hey, like you don't drool over Colonel McQueen from Space Above and Beyond." Alec responded. "A marine! A tank head!"

               Logan quickly interrupted, knowing that if he allowed the conversation to continue, that they'd never get down to business, Will and Alec's banter could be more annoying than Max and Alec's arguing.

               "Guys!"  He yelled.

               "What?" Both transgenics answered together.

               "If I have your full attention….. Eyes Only has a job for you, very important, you need to go down to Florida and collect a very important package….." Logan started instructing them.

               "Logan, you can quit the third person bit, I know that you're Eyes Only." Will casually stated, interrupting him.

               "Ah … I work for Eyes just like you do." Logan replied.

               "C'mon Logan, I figured it out after seeing my first broadcast and meeting you!" Will replied she had an incredibly obstinate expression on her face, she obviously was not about to be fobbed off.

               "Dog with a scent." Alec quipped. "Or a bone."

               Both Will and Logan ignored him.

               "I know it's the truth so you might as well admit it, 'cause I'm not going to let up! I can be incredibly stubborn, Max has nothing on me!" Will warned Logan.

               "She's right Logan! If you thought Max was stubborn, she's a push over compared to Will!" Alec advised him.

               "I'm Will by name, strong willed by nature!" Will told them with a grin. 

               Logan looked from Will to Alec and back to Will, thought for about a minute, then sighing nodded.  "How did you guess?"

               Will shrugged. "I'm smarter than the average wolf!"

               "Bear!" Alec responded grinning.

               Will rolled her eyes. "I know it's bear, but I'm part wolf not bear so I altered it!"

               "Like I altered the A-Team intro to suit me!" Alec suavely pointed out.

               "Yeah, but it's an EO job so no payment." Will replied sarcastically.

               "ENOUGH!" Logan bellowed.

               "Geez Logan we're not deaf!" Alec said sarcastically.

               "Yep, quite the opposite in fact!" Will agreed, nodding.

               "One of the perks of being part cat or wolf….."

               "To get back to the business at hand!" Logan said interrupting Alec and glaring at both of them.

               Will and Alec looked at each other and shrugged, then turned their full attention back to Logan.

               "You want us to collect an important package from Florida and bring it back here?" Will asked.

               "No… Max told you about Ray right?" Logan responded.

               "Sure, White's kid! You sent him to live with his maternal aunt." Alec replied.

                Will nodded. "He's the package…. What happened to the aunt?"

               "She was killed in a car crash a few days ago, a drunk driver luckily Ray was not in the car at the time." Logan informed them, he looked at Will. "It's unsafe for Ray to return to Seattle, and I can't risk placing him with ordinary parents….."

               "You've done the paperwork… I'll pack up my stuff, sort out my affairs and be ready to leave by around nine tomorrow." Will replied immediately getting his drift. She knew that the flight would take well over six hours, she figured that Logan would have booked them on the earliest flight available which from her work she knew would be at around 10am. She stood up, and took the envelope Logan silently handed her.

               "Wait a minute! You're gonna adopt Ames White's kid just like that!" Alec asked incredulously as he snapped his fingers. "You want to be tied to White through his kid?"

               "Alec grow up!" Will told him sarcastically. "Ray's as much a pawn in other peoples games as we were!" Turns to leave and calls over her shoulder. "If you don't want to help me and Ray find a new hiding place, that's fine, I'll see you around little brother." Without another word she calmly walked from the room.

               Alec looked after her dumbfounded, he then looked at Logan.  "Were there two plane tickets in the envelope?" He asked.

               "Yes everything that Will's going to need including Ray's currant whereabouts." Logan calmly replied.

               "Damn it! Hey wait up sis!" Alec yelled and sprinted after her. He failed to catch her so he climbed upon his motorbike and raced after her.

               Will's apartment.

              Alec arrived at her apartment a couple of minutes after she did, he raced up the stairs and met her as she reached her door.

               "You can help me pack and have first pick from the stuff I'll have to leave." Will calmly informed him as she unlocked her door, as if she never doubted that he would come after her.

               Alec followed her into the apartment pouting. "You knew I'd follow you, that I'd help, how?" He sulked, as he flopped onto the sofa.

               "C'mon kiddo, I've known you since birth, I can pretty much predict what all you X kids will do!" Will patiently told him.  She walked over to her fridge and retrieved a can of cherry cola, she poured it into a tall glass, added ice-cubes and set it down in front of Alec.

               Alec's sulky pout turned to a grin, when he tasted the drink. 

               "I knew that that drink would elicit a grin." Will grinned at him. "I'm well stocked on cherry cola, so you can take the lot, I know how addicted you are to the stuff!"

               "Thanks!" He replied, happily sipping his drink.

               "I'll take the rest of the food and stuff to Terminal City." She told him, as she entered her bedroom and began packing up her clothes.

               Alec followed her, still sipping the cola. "Are those all the clothes you've got?" he asked, as he watched her empty the contents of a single door wardrobe and five tier chest of drawers onto her bed.

               Will glanced at them. "Yep, I'm not a clothes kinda gal. Here!" She handed him a very strong large suitcase. "Start packing my books would ya!" 

               Alec looked at the very large and bulging bookcase. "Ah Will, you really need to travel light you know, I'm sure the kids at TC would appreciate something new to read."

               Will gave him a look similar to the look that he would have gotten if he'd suggested to Max, that she should sell her bike.

               Alec raised his hands in surrender, being careful not to spill his drink. "I'll start packing!"

               Will sighed. "No you're right, start packing the food and stuff into carrier bags, they're in the drawer next to the fridge, I'll sort through my books after I pack my clothes."

               Alec looked at the eclectic mix of factual and fiction books on the shelves.  "They really will make a big improvement to the TC library, Jax will be thrilled to get them." He comforted Will.

               "Yeah, she'll take good care of them." Will agreed grinning. "Lots of stuff for the kids to learn in those books, well at least they like learning, I hope none of them give Jax too much trouble in her classes. They need to learn more than just military stuff, they need a more rounded education."

               Alec put down the now empty class and clapped.  "Hey you're sounding like a parent already! Don't be too strict on the kid huh, he needs to have some fun!"

               "That's what his Uncle Alec is for, I'm the parent, the disciplinarian and you're the fun, lets goof around uncle!" Will responded laughing.

               "Mmmmm, Uncle Alec I like the sound of that, I'll get to do the fun stuff, but have none of the responsibilities! Sis, get a place with three bedrooms okay, so I can visit often!" Alec grinned at her.

               "Sure, I want a place in the wilderness, I've been cooped up in the city for too long! Should be able to get a nice size place with some acreage, preferably with woods and a stream." Will said getting a distant look in her eyes.

               After a moment Alec waved his hand in front of her face. "Earth to Will, come in Will!"

               "What?" Will asked blinking, mind back in the present.

               "We need to finish packing your stuff. Gee listen to me I sound responsible, I need more coke!" Alec complained and headed for the kitchen. "Hey Will, what's in the pan?"

               "Stew, turn the heat on full and it'll be good to eat in twenty mins!" Will replied as she packed the last of her clothes and moved on to her books. "Mmm, sort in to fact and fiction then work from there." She muttered to herself.

               "Good idea!" Alec called from the kitchen. "Oooh coffee cake!"

               "Alec! No cake 'til after dinner!" Will yelled.

               "Yes Mom!" Alec sarcastically replied and was about to help himself anyway, when his arm was caught in an iron grip. He jumped startled. "What…. How'd you move so fast!"

               "Good genes." Will drolly stated and released his arm. "Plus as soon as you squealed oooh coffee cake, I moved!" 

               Alec pouted. "I didn't and don't squeal!" He stated, in a petulant tone as he glared at her.

               She just started laughing, patted him on his arm and returned to her bedroom, after she picked up the cake.

               "Awww Will you can leave the cake in here, I won't touch it 'til after dinner! Promise!" He called after the still laughing transgenic.

               "A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent!" Will quoted from her bedroom.

               "Huh?" Alec was confused, then insulted. "Hey do you doubt my word?"

               "After the way you sque….. said coffee cake? Yes!" She looked up from her books as Alec appeared in the doorway.  "You wouldn't have to touch the cake you could eat it with a fork and still have kept your word." She dryly informed him.

               A slight blush appeared on Alec's features. "How'd you guess?"

               Will shrugged her shoulder and grinned. "It's what I would have done!"

               Alec laughed then paused. "Damn I'm blushing again! Why is it that you can make me blush? No one else can!" He asked irritated.

               "No idea." Will stated as she rapidly sorted through her books, only placing her most prized in the suitcase.

               Alec, seeing that Will was not paying him any attention, wandered back into the kitchen and went back to packing tins and cartons.

               A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Alec answered it.

               "Hi Max, O.C, Josh!" Will called from the bedroom.

               Alec rolled his eyes and muttered "Wolves." He stood aside and allowed the others to enter he closed the door and led them into the kitchen.

               "Mmmmm! What smells good?" Joshua asked sniffing the air in appreciation. He identified the source of the scent and ambled over to the stove.

               "Careful Josh, it'll be hot!" Will warned as she entered. "The stew will be ready in about ten minutes, there's enough for everyone!" She grinned at Alec. "And there's coffee cake for desert."

               "Blabbermouth." Alec moaned. "I planed on having the remains of the cake for breakfast!" 

               "You know Alec there's nothing more pathetic, than a fat cat." Will ragged him, tapping him on the stomach.

               "Who's fat!" Alec grabbed her and they began to tussle playfully.

               "Hey! You have guests!" Max sarcastically reminded them. "Alec quit monopolising Will!"

               "Yeah suga! Your going to Florida with her, we aint!" Original Cindy added as she looked in the bags that Alec had already packed.

               "Alec leaving too?" Joshua asked mournfully.

               Will and Alec quit playing and both moved over to him. Will embraced him and Alec patted him.

               "Hey I'm coming back!" Alec reassured him.

               "Unfortunately!" Sarcastically slipped from Max's lips. 

               The others stared at her.

               "Habit!" Max stated shrugging and holding up her hands in a defiant surrender.

               They all laughed except Joshua, who hugged Will tighter.

               "I'm gonna miss tiny fella!" He stated, using the nickname that he had given her the day they had met up again.

               "I'll miss you too Josh!" Will replied, gently extricating herself from his hug, she smiled up at him. "You can help us pack, let me know what you want of my stuff, then the rest can go to T.C."

               Three hours later.

                They were seated around the kitchen table finishing off the coffee cake. They had decided to leave the cake for supper, Alec was out voted on the issue.

               Will sighed and stretched.  "Well that's everything packed, my rents paid up for the next two months, so if  you know of anyone who can use the place, just make sure they leave it as they found it, fully furnished, no damage and you'll get the deposit back." 

               "How much?" Alec asked his eyes lit up whenever money was mentioned. "Ow!" He glared at Max.

               "You care more about getting your grubby hands on Will's deposit than that she's leaving Seattle!" Max glared at him.

               Will started laughing. "I'm going to miss these family get togethers, you and Alec are so funny when you squabble!"

               They both turned their glares upon her and included Original Cindy who had joined in Will's laughter.

               "Max, Alec has already made me promise to get a place big enough to house him on his visits." Will stated having reined in her mirth.

               Max's jaw dropped. "He did?"

               "Yep!" Will grinned at Max's response. "And I've still got the satellite phone Logan gave me, he directed in the instruction letter that I should keep it, since it's untraceable."  She paused and looked at her family, O.C. had been given that status in Will's mind, after knowing her for about forty minutes. 

                "When we get settled, I'll call you, and you can visit anytime! Oh that reminds me, there's a job going at my old firm for a translator, I told the company that I might know someone who'd be ideal, that I'd give 'em a call and a covering letter, I typed it up ready, so if any of the X5's want the job, just have 'em fill in their name!" 

               Will went and retrieved the letter, returning to the table she handed it to Max.

               "Thanks, I know the perfect guy for the job…..  Henry." Max replied grinning as she took the envelope.

               "Henry… Tactics and translation. Yep, he'd be perfect….. Max have you got his number?" Will asked.

               "Yep." Dials her cell and hands it to Will.

               "Thanks!" Will said nodding at her little sister.  The cell rang a few times and was then picked up.  "Henry, it's Will." Paused, listened, and rolled her eyes.  "Yeah the werewolf, look I have to leave Seattle and that leaves my job vacant, I told my boss that I had the ideal replacement, I've written you a covering letter, and if you want the job I'll call Henderson and let him know." Listened for a few moments. 

               "Yeah, that's right, translating for an import/ export firm…. Good hours, good pay." Paused. "You want it... great, Max has the letter, I'll just add your name to it then call up Henderson, oh I had to leave Seattle to take care of a sick relative down south, you're an old classmate." Listened.  "Wilhelmina, Will Wolfe, I told 'em that I don't use and hate being called Wilhelmina." Paused and listened. 

               "Nah I didn't give that many details, Henderson doesn't care, he'll test your abilities and when you pass he'll hire you, he basically only trusts his own judgement, so he doesn't like C.V.'s etcetera, but he's willing to try people personally recommended by other employees." Listened. "Thanks Henry, bye!" Will hung up and handed the cell back to Max. 

              "Thanks, I'm just gonna go call Henderson, I'll use the land line in my bedroom." She stated as she quickly left the kitchen.

               Alec raised an eyebrow. "She wants to talk to him privately…. He'll listen to her recommendation…. Me thinks they had more than a boss/ employee relationship!"

               From her bedroom. "Don't confuse my relationship with my boss, with your relationship with Normal!" Will yelled and shut the door on her kin.

               This caused all but Alec to dissolve into fits of laughter.

               "Hey suga, you don't need to be in no closet with us!" Original Cindy told the stunned transgenic.

               "Normal…. Me!" Alec was at a loss for words for once.

               "That's why you're his golden boy." Max purred.

               Max and Cindy continued to tease him, whilst Joshua just laughed.

               Alec was still in shock from the concept of him and Normal, when Will returned a minute or so later. She had been able to hear them through the door, she walked in and stood behind Alec and hugged him as he sat.

               "This is definitely a first! You speechless!" She gently teased him, dropped a kiss on his head and returned to her seat.

               Alec looked at her, his expression was shell shocked. "How… What…."

               "Oh relax, I know that you're a rampant heterosexual! We all do!" Will assured him as she rolled her eyes. "You should know by now that I will return your banter, wisecracks and innuendo with equal or more force!"

               "Yeah suga, we know that you are straight!" O.C added her assurance.

               "You're a tom cat through and through!" Max's assurance was tinged with sarcasm.

               "Yep a ladies man!" Joshua agreed.

               "You need to call Normal, tell him you'll be gone for a few days." Max reminded Alec and rolled her eyes. "He won't give his golden boy any grief about an unscheduled vacation!" She added dripping sarcasm.

               Alec ignored the comment and removed his cell from his pocket, he dialled quickly.  "Hey Normal." Paused.  "Yeah it's Alec, sorry to bother you at home, but a family emergency just came up, I need to go out of town for a week two at the most." Listened.  "Will's going too, an elderly relative's going to need full time care so she volunteered, I'm going with her to help set up their place, apparently our Uncle Deck let it get into a right state, we hadn't seen him in years, but he's family so when Social Services contacted us…." Listened.  "Thanks Normal, I'll tell my sister, bye."

               "Tell me what?" Will asked. 

               Because of their similar colouring, personalities and obvious sibling attitude towards each other, Alec had introduced her to the Jam Pony crew and the staff and regulars at The Crash as his elder sister.

               "That he thinks that you are an exemplary person and he would give you a reference should you need one." Alec quoted Normal, unconsciously mimicking him.

               Will grinned at the answer.

               "Not often I agree with Normal suga, but on this he is dead right!" Original Cindy commented  and stood up. She went over to Will and they hugged. "I'm gonna miss ya suga!"

               "I'll miss you too….. when I get my new place you come visit okay!" Will replied with equal feeling. 

               Joshua stood and gently engulfed both Will and O.C in his arms, Max and Alec quickly followed suit.

               "You all are welcome to visit anytime!" Will assured her family.

               They separated from the group hug reluctantly, especially Max, who was the last to break physical contact with Will.

               "Call us at least once a week!" Max ordered. 

               "You have my word of honour." Will solemnly vowed.

               "Do you have enough cash suga?" Original Cindy queried. "I got a bit put aside if you need it!"

               "Thanks O.C, but I've got quite a stash hidden here and Eyes Only gave me some more and a credit card for emergencies." Will assured her. "Alec, you've been saying you want to get a better bike, so since I've seen you drooling over mine you can have it!"

               "Thanks sis!" Alec yelled picking her up and twirling her around.

               "Put me down you idiot!" Will said through her laughter, whacking him on the shoulders.

               Alec complied after about a minute, gently setting her down.

               The others were grinning at their antics.

               "We've got to go Will, we'll take this stuff to T.C. tomorrow evening." Max said pointing to all the boxes and bags. "We'll borrow a car." She hugged Will one last time and swiftly headed for the door.

               "Take care suga." Original Cindy told Will as she hugged her.

               Joshua engulfed Will in a bear hug, lifting her off the floor. "Bye tiny fella, remember you call once a week."

               "I will Josh." She replied as he reluctantly set her back on the floor.

               He looked really mournful.

              "Hey you can come visit after we get settled." Will reminded the gentle giant.

               "You can count on it!" Joshua replied grinning, he then joined Max and O.C at the door and after he put on his crash helmet they left.

               "Hey you'll see 'em again!" Alec comforted her, placing his arms around her. "We have a habit of turning up like bad pennies!" He reminded her.

               "I know…. It's just that I've always felt responsible for you guys and I hate leaving you with Ames and his agency and the Familiars on your backs." Will replied leaning into his embrace.

               "C'mon Will we did fine before we rescued you!" He smugly reminded her. "We'll be fine."

               "Yeah…. I know you will!" She replied and sighing moved out of his arms. "As much as I'd love to stay in your brotherly embrace, I need to gather up my money and you need to go home and collect some things." She said and gave him a little push towards the door.

               "Hey are you trying to get rid of me so I don't see the places were you like to stash cash?" Alec asked indignantly as he headed towards the door.

               "No, I actually trust you. I just want to be alone for a bit and your leaving for your things, will give me that time." Will replied with complete honesty.

               "I'll be no more than twenty five minutes, if you need longer I could come by in my car in the morning." Alec thoughtfully offered.

               "Thank you for the kind offer bro, but twenty five minutes is all the time that I'll need." She replied and hugged him.

               Alec returned the quick hug, then picking up his rucksack, that was now crammed full of cans of cherry cola, he left the apartment.

               Will closed the door, and sat down on the sofa to look at the items in the envelope that Logan had given her.

****

               A couple of minutes later.

               After quickly absorbing the data in the envelope that Logan had given her, Will went into her bedroom, removed her cowboy boots and sank down on the king sized bed, she sat crossed legged, with her elbows resting upon her knees and her chin cupped in her hands.

               "Manticore is no more yet I'm still doing what I was designed for. The one thing I didn't tell the kids and their, our ordinary friends was that I knew exactly why I was created. How could I tell my family that my purpose, the reason I exist, is to protect Sandemann's sons and any children they may have." She asked the stuffed bear in World War One flying gear that was seated on a pillow on the bed.

               She picked up the bear, that she had named Murdoch; Alec had won him for her at a fair a few days after he had rescued her; and hugged him.  "That I would be compelled to protect Ames even from them. Damn it! They're free, but I'm still a pawn. I tried to move against Ames in the forest, but my conditioning prevented it!" 

               Will stood up, placed Murdoch back on the bed and began going from hiding place to hiding place around her apartment, retrieving her money. 

               She finally sat down on the sofa in the lounge after collecting the last of the money, she knew exactly how much was there without counting it.  "$5965 dollars, plus the $2000 Logan gave me plus." She retrieved her wallet. "$354.52 makes a grand total of $8319.52….."

               Will's mind flashed to the letter contained in the envelope. "Logan can hack into a system and give me ownership of any suitable abandoned property I find. As long as no owners can be found his instructions said he'd put the property in my name." 

               She rolled her eyes and switched on the TV, to stop herself from continuing to think out loud. She flipped through the channels and knowing that an X-files episode would soon be running, settled down to watch it, while she awaited Alec's return.

               Twenty seven minutes later.

               Alec used his key to enter the apartment. He often crashed on Will's sofa bed.

               "Hi honey, I'm home!" He yelled his customary greeting.

               "Your dinner's in the wolf!" Will responded, as she always did, but did not move from the sofa.

               Alec came into the lounge, he glanced at the TV, and seeing that it was the X-Files episode Shapes, turned to leave.

               "Hey didn't realise you were drooling over your perfect mate, I'll be in the bedroom, you can have the couch!" He told her.

               Will looked at him and shuddered in revolution.  "Ugh! The only TV wolf/human combo I fantasise about is Sheriff Matthew Donner from Wolf Lake!" She informed Alec archly. 

               "He can't doesn't morph right?" Alec queried as he moved to the sofa and flopped down next to her.

               "Right! So we have a lot in common, 'cause I can't flip, but can still understand wolves, communicate with 'em and I have all their heightened senses, strength etcetera." Will replied. 

               A dreamy look had come upon her face as she visualised Matt Donner, half naked in bed as he had been in an episode where he was shot.  "He's my perfect mate!" She sighed.

               "You know he's fictional right?" Alec asked, worried that she might have gone nuts.

               "Like Leia." Will responded amused.

               "Leia?" Alec stared at her.

               "Alec you talk in your sleep!" She told him laughing.

               "I don't!" Alec replied indignantly, glaring at her.

               "Yes you do! You have some very interesting dreams!" Will responded, through her fit of giggles.

               Alec blushed a deep red and just stared at her in shock.

               Will regained control of herself and put her arm around her younger brother. 

               "Hey I will never reveal what you say in your sleep, not even under torture!" She reassured him. "I can keep a secret, besides it's nobodies business!"

               "Yeah but what if I let out something important too……." He asked as the blush slowly faded.

               "No you are unable to reveal anything that might harm your colleagues, even during sleep!" Will stated completely confident of the fact. "You were trained sublimely, not to reveal anything of great import!"

               "Just embarrassing crushes huh?" Alec joked, back to his confident blasé self.

               Will returned his grin. 

               "Just say your full designation out loud before you go to bed and you will be unable to talk about anything in your sleep!" she advised.

               "I won't?" Alec was surprised at this snippet of information.

               "Nope, part of our programming!" Will informed him. "I did mention it in my debriefing report."

               "Yeah, Max said I should read it, but you know I've been busy……" Alec confessed, shrugging his shoulders and expecting a lecture.

               "There's a copy on my laptop, you can read it on the flight." Will replied grinning.

               "I'll do that." Alec confirmed relieved and surprised.

               "You thought you were gonna get a lecture huh?" She accurately deduced, still grinning.

               "Uh yeah." Alec replied, still not used to being read so easily by this particular Transgenic.

               Will rolled her eyes.  "Alec you are an adult, you get to make your own choices!" She paused and grinned. "Now I'm not saying that I'll never lecture you, but if I do it'll be for a darn more important reason than you not reading my debriefing."

               Alec nodded at this. "Okay, fair enough! I only get a lecture from you if I do something really stupid right?"

               "Right!" Will readily confirmed.

               With that matter settled, both transgenics then turned their attention back to watching the last half hour of the X-Files.  Will sat with her arm still around Alec, he had placed his arm around her shoulders as they talked, and Will rested her head upon his shoulder, as they relaxed in front of the TV.

               "Will Mulder or Doggett?" Alec asked her over the end credits.

               "What?" Will asked. "Oh which would I date easy Doggett. Your turn Scully or Reyes?"

               "Mmmm that's a tough one, um Scully….. no Reyes….oh I don't know can't I date 'em both?" Alec replied grinning.

               Will shrugged. "Sure why not."

               "Mulder and Scully'd have a field day with us." Alec commented.

               "Yep! We're the products of an honest to goodness government conspiracy!" Will replied grinning.

               Alec started laughing.

               "What?" Will asked confused by his mirth.

               "Honest and goodness are hardly terms that I'd apply to Manticore or the American government!" Alec spoke through his laughter.

               Will rolled her eyes and swiftly stood up, causing Alec to fall sideways on the couch, since, he had been leaning on her. He didn't bother to catch himself, and landed on the cushions.

               Will shook her head at the still laughing transgenic.  "Okay, that was slightly amusing. How many cans of cherry cola did you drink today?" She asked in concern. "You are definitely on a sugar high!"

               Alec collected himself with an effort.  "Um about ah, four." He replied, looking at her guiltily.

               "Including the three cans you had here?" Will queried, narrowing her eyes.

               "Okay, if you want to be pedantic, seven!" Alec replied with a pout.

               "Why did Sandemann have to design us so that although we can not get drunk, we go loopy if we have too much sugar." She asked rhetorically.

               "It's our kryptonite!" Alec yelled, leaping off the sofa and hopping about like an overactive three year old.

                Will rolled her eyes and swiftly moved off to her bedroom to get some spare bedding and out of the way of the hyper transgenic.  "Always kicks in about an hour after mass consumption." She muttered to herself. 

               Sounds of the theme song from the Tiny Toons comes from her lounge, Alec is singing loudly and off key.  "We're tiny we're toony we're all a little loony…….." Alec continued to loudly sing.

               "Alec!" Will yelled. "If you don't pull yourself together, down some coffee or do something to dilute the blasted sugar, I will be forced to knock you out!" She warned him.

               "You're bossy you know that!" Was his manic response. He started chucking the sofa's cushions onto the floor, then flipped it out into his bed.

               "When daggers are pointed at innocent hearts and muskets are ready to fire, when tyrants ride high and govern with fear and the forces of evil conspire, then from out of the night a hero must ride with a courage that even a mask won't disguise, they turn to a man called Zorro." Alec sang loudly as he used an umbrella and parried pretend foes.  "One who's larger than life and defender of all he's this man whom the people acclaim, he's the one who strikes back for the poor and oppressed a hero who's name is Zorro, his name is Zorro!"

               Will returned to the lounge, her arms full of bedding, dodging the still make believe fencing transgenic.

               "God, Alec you murdered that song!" Will complained. "Would you quit fencing!"

               Alec pouted at her and dropped the umbrella on the floor.

               "Thank you!" Will told him sarcastically.

               "Hey do you think that Logan wanted to be Zorro when he was a kid?" Alec asked grinning as he sat himself on the sofa bed and stated bouncing. "Cept we can see his eyes, it's the only part of his body you can see!"

                "Here!" Will said, ignoring Alec's query and shoving the items into his arms. "I'm gonna make you a pot of black coffee and you are going to drink the lot!"

               Alec pouted. "Don't want coffee! I want cola!"

               Will glared at him. "You are going to consume the coffee if I have to pour it down your throat!" She all but growled at him, before spinning around and heading for the kitchen.

               Alec stood up and followed her, still carrying the bedding.  "But Willlll." He whined. "If I drink a whole pot of black coffee, I'll be up all night!"

               "Crap!" Was her blunt response. "You're a transgenic, caffeine does not keep you awake, the only thing it does for you is taste pleasant!"

               "Still don't wanna drink it!" He replied sulkily pouting, sounding and looking like a petulant toddler.  He turned on his heel and swiftly left the kitchen, dumped the bedding upon the sofa bed, flopped onto it, grabbed the TV remote and began flipping channels.

               "I am not going to kill him, I'll regret it if I do, I'll get the guilt's, I am not going to kill him no matter the goad! I am strong I can resist the urge to snap his annoying neck!" Will muttered this mantra to herself over and over as she made the coffee.

               Two minutes later.

               Will entered the lounge carrying a huge mug of black coffee, Alec was still flipping through the channels, he ignored Will as she placed the drink on the table next to him.

               "Alec either down all the coffee I made, or you don't get the bike." She calmly informed him.

               Alec looked at her shocked. "That's not fair!" He moaned.

               "No what isn't fair is me being stuck on a plane tomorrow, with a hyper active transgenic!" She archly responded.

               "I wont b…." Alec started to speak.

               "Yes you will be, tomorrow you'll crave sugar, unless we nip it in the bud by your drinking all the damn coffee!" She told him, no longer in the mood to argue further she took a step forward.

               Alec correctly reading the determination on the tiny transgenics face hastily picked up the mug and started to drink. 

               Will watched him like a hawk as he drank each refill, from two pots of coffee. Finally Will nodded. "Okay, that should curb if not stop the cravings." She stated and took the mug into the kitchen.

               "Man Will, I feel ill!" Alec moaned, as he lolled on the sofa bed.

               "It's psycho-somatic!" Was her unconcerned response.

               Alec just groaned, holding his stomach, with one hand, the other on his forehead as she walked over to the sofa bed.

               "Alec, I know exactly what an X5 can handle, it won't work on me." Will drolly informed him. 

               Alec opened his eyes and stared at her for a few moments, then realising that his theatrics, were not going to work, he jumped off the sofa bed.  "Okay lets get this bed made!" He stated as if he hadn't just supposedly been at death door.

               Will ignored the lightning fast recovery and they grabbed a sheet and swiftly made up the bed.

               "Military corners just like we were taught!" Alec quipped as he looked at his bed. "Manticore would be so proud!"

               "Yep, I get first go in the bathroom!" Will called as she sprinted for it.

               "Wha…!" Alec started to say. What Will had said hit him and he joined in the sprint, arriving at the bathroom door to have it slammed in his face.  "Hey Will!" He yelled pounding on the door. "I'm a guest! This aint very hospitable!" He complained.

               "Tough!" She replied and then proceeded to ignore his mutterings about her poor treatment of guests.

               After a minute, Alec realised he couldn't guilt Will into letting him use the bathroom first, so he slouched back to the living room.

               Three minutes later she emerged, grinned at Alec and headed for her room.

               "About time!" He grouched as he entered the bathroom. 


	3. Chapter 3

11th to 23rd Nov 2003

Unwelcome Ties          By Western Blakehawke.

Set after LATR.  2021.

Ames meets the first human looking transgenic. Alec is reunited with a sibling and takes a road trip.

**Chapter 3**

               **Day One.          **

               Will's apartment.

               8:13am.

               Will had been awake for a couple of hours, quietly doing her exercises and finishing sorting stuff out.  

               Alec had been fast asleep and had only woken up about twenty one minutes before, but had yet to drag himself out of his nice warm bed.

               The phone rang waking Alec who had fallen back asleep, he answered it looking a little the worse for wear, standing shivering in his pale blue boxer shorts even though transgenics are immune to all but the coldest temperatures. "Hello." Paused. "Hey Logan, okay, we'll see you in about fifthteen minutes!" Alec said and hung up the phone.

               Will, walked out of the bathroom, towelling her short hair dry, she had got in there first again.

               "Logan's gonna take us to the airport." Alec informed her as he sped past her to the bathroom.

               "Alec, X5's should be able to handle that much coffee, without effect!" She reminded him and grinned as he cursed her, and went to make breakfast, she made a full fry up for Alec, of fake bacon, toast and eggs, then made some toast for herself.

               Twenty seven minutes later.

               Logan had arrived and they were carrying luggage down to his car. 

               Alec just had a holdall, Will had two holdalls, and two large suitcases, containing all her worldly possessions, that she didn't wish to leave behind.

               "Damn it Will." Alec complained as he lugged a large suitcase, making a drama out of it's weight even though to a transgenic it was insignificant and was not all that heavy for an ordinary to carry either.  "I thought you were only gonna pack your absolute favourite books!"

               "I did! Quit being a jerk!" Will groused at him.

               "Hey who got out of the bed on the wrong side this morning?" He responded. "You weren't grouchy earlier!" he whined.

               "I'm insane that's why!" Will archly replied. "Being with you this morning drove home how much I'm gonna miss your irritating ways!"

               "Oh!" Was his stunned response. "Wow no ones ever said they'd miss me before, I thought you were just being nice the other night." Alec explained.

               Will grinned at him. "Nope kiddo, I meant every word."

               Alec grinned in response, did not even mind being referred to as kiddo.

               "There's no reason you can't have visitors once you get settled." Logan reminded Will.

               "I know, I've already extended an invitation to Max, O.C, Josh and Alec, you're very welcome too Logan." Will told him.

               "Yeah, she plans to buy a large house with acreage, some woods and a stream in the middle of nowhere." Alec reeled off the wish list that Will had given him last night.

               "Good idea." Logan nodded his head for emphasis. "You'll be home schooling Ray." He stated rhetorically.

               Will confirmed the statement with a nod anyway. 

               They arrived at Logan's car and loaded the trunk and quickly got in, Will opted to sit in the back since she only needed a little leg room, compared to Alec.

               "But what about my car?" Alec suddenly asked as he put on his seatbelt.

               "What you're more worried about leaving it here in a secure garage, than at the airport?" Will was so incredulous she fumbled her seat belt.

               Alec looked sheepish. "Oh I hadn't thought that far ahead. I forgot I'd have to leave it at the airport or get someone to come collect it."

               "Sugar brain!" Will responded and ruffled his hair.

               "Hey leave the hair alone!" He cried indignantly and hurriedly retrieved his comb from his pocket and used the mirror to straighten his hair, whilst glaring at his grinning sister.

               "Would you two try and behave." Logan said with a long suffering sigh as they pulled out of the underground garage. "Remember, you're supposed to be travelling low key!"

               "Relax Logan! Will and I are old hands at this kind of stuff!" Alec smugly reassured him.

               "Logan, no one will have any cause to remember us." Will added her own assurances.

               "Good." Logan stated.

                9:15am.

                SeattleAirport

               Will and Alec checked in for their flight, which was scheduled to leave at 9:45am. Alec's eyes misted over slightly at the extra charges that entailed from Will's luggage, she just handed over the cash without a word.

               "Told ya those suitcases were too heavy." Alec said smugly, then winced as Will brought her right boot heel down sharply on his left foot.

               Logan seeing that an argument was imminent hastily distracted them by offering to buy them some more breakfast.  Alec perked up at this since he was always happy to eat especially if someone else was dumb enough to pay the tab.  Will declined the offer and she and Logan just sat watching the twenty two year old transgenic eat, slightly amused expressions on their faces, as they exchanged an eye rolling over the appetites of kids.

               10:12am

               Their flight still hadn't been called and Will and Alec continued to sit with Logan trying to keep a low profile, both transgenics were keeping a tight rein on their banter, since they knew that their comments tended to attract attention.

               10:57am

               The flight to Florida was finally announced.

               Will gave Logan a quick hug before she and Alec, grabbed their hand luggage and made for the boarding area.

                12:36 pm.

               Onboard the aeroplane to Florida.

               Will and Alec were seated in the cramped confines of a Boeing 767 that should have been retired five years before. They were only part of the way through the journey. 

               Both were trying to read and maintain the pretence of being ordinaries.  This involved Will not reading her thick novel in a few minutes and Alec reading Will's debriefing at the average human speed instead of scrolling down the pages at speed whilst absorbing the information in a matter of mere minutes.

                Both were also having a hard time keeping a firm control on their sarcastic tendencies.

               Florida.

               7:28pm Eastern Standard Time.

               Just over six and a half hours after they left Seattle Will and Alec finally landed in Florida. They had quickly retrieved their luggage, and picked up the large rental car that Logan had arranged, they drove to their hotel in silence.

               They had put themselves into a semi hypnotic state around two and a half hours after they had left Will's apartment. The state curbed their desire to speak unless they had too, so they had opted to use it, so as not to draw attention to themselves by an explosion of sarcasm.

               8:01 pm.

               They found the hotel, got their room keys, had a quick supper and retired early for the night.

               **Day Two.******

               The next morning.

                6:14am

               Alec came through the door that joined his and Will's rooms he leant on the doorframe and watched Will performing T'ai Chi.

               "Why aren't you naked?" He quipped.

               Will continued to exercise.  "Because I'm not Colonel Steward and we are not planning to take over an airport. Also we're siblings so asking me why I'm not naked is totally inappropriate." She calmly informed him.

               "Will I didn't mean I wanted to see you naked!" Alec yelped going red.

               Will grinned at him. "I know that kiddo, but others wouldn't so think before you quip!"

               Alec grinned back at her his blush slowly fading. "Will do, hey have you ordered breakfast yet?"

               "Nope, order me some toast would you." Will replied as she continued with her daily exercise routine.

               "Sure." Alec said as he went over to the phone and dialled room service.

               A short while later.

               Will and Alec were eating breakfast, in Will's room.

                "What did Logan put on the kid's birth certificate?" Alec asked around a mouthful of sausage.

               "Nothing, he left it blank so I could fill in the details, same with my own." Will replied after she swallowed her mouthful of toast. "I filled them in at my apartment."

               "Okay I know you probably stuck with Wilhelmina Wolfe, but what did you decide to call the kid?" He asked as he shovelled his beans onto his toast with his fork, before cutting it into smaller pieces and cramming a piece into his mouth.

               "Yep, I'm still Wilhelmina Wolfe." Will replied as she sipped her orange juice. "James."

               Alec's next forkful of toast and beans, stopped in mid air as he stared at her in disbelief. "James! You're calling him James!" Was his incredulous response. "Take away the J and you get Ames!"

               "Yes, but the shortened version of James can be Jay and I think it's advisable to rename Ray something that a short version of, will sound like Ray so he's more likely to respond automatically to it." Will patiently pointed out.

               Alec ate his forkful of food and ran through a list of names that sounded like Ray, other than Jay he could only think of one more.

               "Bailey!" He said in triumph. "You can call him Bailey, Bai for short!" Alec grinned at her.

               Will shook her head.   "Bailey Wolfe, Bai Wolfe…. Alec wolves bay! No way am I saddling Ray with that name and the jokes that'll come from it! He'll be asked if he bays at the moon!" Will pointed out.

               Alec was downcast.  "I hadn't thought of that!"

               "I didn't think so!" Will replied patting him on the hand. "Nice try though!"

               "Okay James is fine!" Alec responded with a grin.

               They quickly finished their food and ran through the itinerary that Logan had given them on the drive to the airport.

               "Our first stop is the morgue, to identify Sally Stevens body." Alec said recalling the list.

               "Yep, I get to play the grieving sister in law." Will responded drolly. "Then we sign the forms, hand over the cost of her cremation and leave."

               "Yeah, I still can't believe that they don't expect us to stay for the funeral though, and collect the ashes!" Alec replied, being uncomfortable with the idea of just leaving a supposedly beloved relative.

               "Alec, Logan explained that our doing so will not be considered unusual, that it's standard practice for families who's loved ones die miles from home to have them cremated there and then have their ashes either sent to them or scattered in a particular spot." Will patiently reiterated she also was not keen on the idea of leaving Rebecca's remains behind. "We have no choice Alec, we have to leave as soon as possible."

               "I know it just doesn't sit well." He replied.

               "For me either." Will stated then moved on briskly. "Okay, we'll pay for 'em to scatter her ashes over the everglades okay?"

               "Yeah that sounds fine." Alec responded. "Then after all that's been sorted, we go get Ray."

               "Peter." Will corrected. "And I'm Lily Stevens I've got the ID here." She said and patted her shirt pocket.

               "Right and I'm your brother Alistair Newman. Okay I've got the ID Logan made up for me." Alec stated.

               "After we get Peter, we take a flight to Atlanta Georgia, pick up the motor home that Logan arranged, then drive to New York state, hop over the boarder into Canada head for Montreal, where we split up." Will stated and

paused a moment not liking the thought of Alec's leaving then she faced reality.

               "You meet the first Eyes Only contact and start your journey by plane, train and car across Canada to Vancouver, where you hop over the boarder and head back to Seattle." Will reeled off the rest of the plan. "Logan worked out a roundabout route that'll take us roughly four to five days to get to Montreal."

               "Yep!" Alec responded. "I wish I could stay with you until you find a place and get settled." He said and took hold of her hands.

               "Me too, but even Normal would get mad at you if you're gone longer than two weeks." Will pointed out. But tightly clasped his hands nevertheless.  "Max and the others need you more than I do, Ames doesn't know that I'm adopting Ray, but he does know that there's something special about Max, he read her runes to remember, where Sandemann announced that she was the one who would stop the Coming."

               "I read everything that you'd put about the Coming, in your report." Alec stated. "It's not much."

               "As I said in the report, Sandemann clamed up when I asked for more details on the Coming, just said that he would tell me all when the time was right…….. he never got the chance before he had to flee." Will replied. It was extremely evident that she was still annoyed at Sandemann for not revealing what the Coming entailed.

               Alec seeing that this was a touchy subject with Will, tactfully changed the subject. "How will Ray know it's safe to trust us?" he asked.

               They reluctantly released hands.

               Will showed him the caduceus medallion on a silver chain that she still wore, it was identical to Joshua's.  "I'll make sure he sees this."

               "You got one too?" Alec asked in surprise.

               "Yep, as far as I know Sandemann only gave a medallion to Joshua, Isaac and myself." She replied with her one shoulder shrug.

               "Okay well as soon as he sees that, hopefully he'll play along." Alec said doubtfully.

               "Hey, what's with the pessimism?" Will asked. "You're usually an optimist!"

               "Yeah." Alec replied shrugging. "It's just 'cause you're the only transgenic, I actually feel I have a sibling bond with……. I hate knowing that in a few days we'll be parting." 

               Will took his hands again. "I do too, of all the kin that I've met inside or outside of Manticore, you are my true brother, I think that if we checked, we'd find that we share DNA." 

               "Okay enough being sombre!" Alec responded grinning as he broke the iron grip they had on each others hands, he could never stay miserable for long.

               Will laughed at her brother's sudden change in demeanour.

               Alec suddenly realised something.

               "Will, ring!" He said and tapped the ring finger on her left hand.

               "Whoops!" She responded.  She felt in the pocket of her shirt for the gold wedding band, that Logan had supplied, she placed it upon her finger and looked at it.

               Alec grinned at her. "Looks good! Now all you need to do is find a guy crazy enough to marry you!" He quipped, laughing as he easily dodged the punch she threw, with her newly adorned left hand.

               "My finding a guy is no problem, explaining my kin, especially my obnoxious brother is!" Will shot back grinning.

               "Ah c'mon Will, Josh aint obnoxious!" Alec responded.

               Will just rolled her eyes at him, not bothering to rise to the obvious bait. She looked at the ring on her finger and shaking her head removed it placing it back in her pocket.

               "Will what are you doing?" Alec asked her in surprise. "You need a wedding band!"

               Will reached into her shirt and pulled out the leather thong she wore with what everyone had assumed was a medicine bag attached, she undid the pouch and tumbled a tri coloured gold Russian wedding ring onto her palm.

               "I prefer my own." She quietly informed Alec as she slipped it onto her left hand.

               "You're married!" Alec was shocked.

               Will had made no mention of a husband either verbally or in her debriefing report.

               "Was married." Will corrected him.

               "When? How?" Alec asked in amazement.

               "I was eighteen, it was an assignment." Will calmly informed him.

               "How long did it last?" Alec queried.

               "Until seventeen months ago." Will blandly stated.

               "What? But you've been on the bases all that time?" Alec was confused.

               "Yes, he worked abroad and I stayed here with my father, Lydecker, since John travelled a lot because of his work we decided that getting our own home was counter productive, since my work for Manticore, well my cover job also involved a lot of travel." Will replied with her cover spiel.

               "I don't get it? What was the assignment?" Alec queried still baffled.

               "He was undercover C.I.A. they thought he was a traitor so they had me date him." Will paused. Her eyes get a distant look then after a few seconds she came out of her memories and shrugged her right shoulder.   "That turned into marriage, when I couldn't uncover anything concrete, the marriage lasted for nine years, before he finally slipped up, giving me proof that he was a double agent. I killed him as I was instructed to do so."

               Will's face and posture were absolutely unreadable.

               Alec leaned back in his chair and studied her intently. "Nine years huh?" He reiterated. "Must have been tough playing the loving spouse for all that time."

               "No because I made the mistake of falling for him." Will replied face and voice totally impassive.

               "Will I'm sorry." Alec told her quietly he leant forward taking her hands in his.

               "So am I." Will replied with a weak grin. "Sorry bro I hadn't planned on telling anyone."

               "Hey I'm not anyone I'm your brother." Alec stated then looked guilty. "Damn and I was teasing you about getting married!"

               "Alec you didn't know and I enjoyed the banter!" Will responded grinning at him. "It's done and there's nothing I can do to change it, so it's not worth worrying about."

               "Okay…..So he had absolutely no idea that you were a genetically engineered part wolf assassin?" Alec couldn't help asking.

               "No, not 'til I killed him, then he knew the truth." Will stated and from her tone Alec knew that the subject was now firmly closed. 

               8:54 am.

                Outside the morgue.

               Will and Alec had arrived early. Will's eyes were red and puffy from crying, since she had to make their con believable.

               Alec spoke almost sub-vocally.  "Wow Will I didn't know you could turn on the waterworks at the drop of a hat." He said in awe.

               Will stopped herself from grinning at him.  "I've always had the knack. Lets get this part of the charade over with." She replied at the same level, steeling herself.

               Alec nodded, placed his arm around her shoulders and Will leaned into him as they slowly walked across the parking lot and arrived at the morgue just as an employee opened the doors as a clock chimed nine. They entered the building, looking for all the world like distraught family there to identify their kin.

               Nineteen minutes later.

               Will and Alec were finally shown into a viewing room.

               "Mrs. Stevens?" A male attendant gently asked when they entered.

               Will nodded, in full character of the distraught relative.

               Alec still had his left arm around her shoulders.

               "And you are Sir?" The attendant politely asked.

               "Alistair Newman, Mrs. Stevens' brother." Alec replied.

               The attendant nodded and walked over to the gurney, where a sheet covered cadaver lay.

               Will chose that moment to act. "I…. I can't I'm sorry, … but I can't!" She wailed turning away from the gurney into Alec's embrace.

               "Shhh. Lil." Alec said gently rubbing her back. He looked at the attendant. "I've know Sally for years, why don't I identify her?" He suggested.

               "I'm sorry Sir, but she needs to be identified by a relative." The attendant regretfully informed them. "Friends or colleagues may only identify a person, when no close family can be found." 

               "It's okay Al, I'll do it." Will bravely stated wiping her eyes. "He can stay with me?" She implored the attendant.

               "Of course." He replied gently. "If you're ready?"

               Will made a show of steeling herself, then nodded and took a step forward, to stand beside the gurney, Alec moved with her.

               The attendant swiftly pulled the sheet from the corpses face.

               Will sagged in a faint, Alec caught her and carried her from the room to the seats outside, he gently placed her on the sofa, knelt beside her and started rubbing her arms as he spoke gently to her.

               "I'll get her some water." The attendant stated, unfazed by this common reaction and hurried over to the water cooler.

               Will made a show of slowly coming round from the faint, then promptly burst into tears.  "Oh God, why Sally! First Chris now his sister!" She wailed as Alec embraced her.

               Alec said nothing as he rocked her gently, letting her cry. 

               The attendant put the plastic cup of water down and left them to their grief. Eight minutes later he returned carrying paperwork. When he entered the area, he saw that Will had composed herself.

               Will gave him a weak smile as he entered. "I'm sorry for fainting and having hysterics." She apologized quietly in a trembling voice. "It… it was Sally."

               "There's really no need to apologize Mrs. Stevens." The attendant gently assured her. "If you'll just sign these forms, I can take you over to the funeral director, we find that offering our own services on site helps the bereaved."

               Thirty three minutes later.

               Will and Alec left the morgue after completing all the paperwork and arranging with the onsite funeral arrangers to have Rebecca cremated and her ashes scattered over the everglades. Just as Logan had said, no one seemed surprised that neither Will or Alec would stay for the cremation or that they wished for the undertakers to scatter the ashes. They had been given Rebecca's personal effects.


	4. Chapter 4

11th to 23rd Nov 2003

Unwelcome Ties          By Western Blakehawke.

Set after LATR.  2021.

Ames meets the first human looking transgenic. Alec is reunited with a sibling and takes a road trip.

**Chapter 4**

****

               10:35am

               Children's Home.

               Will and Alec arrived at the home, where Ray had been staying. They were ushered into the office, where they were greeted by a social worker.

               "Mrs Stevens I'm Lorna McNeill, I run this facility." The woman stated holding out her hand.

               Will took it and gently shook it. "This is my brother Alistair Newman." She introduced Alec.

               Alec shook the woman's hand they then sat in the chairs she indicated. Alec shifted his, so that it was abutting Will's.

               "We have a few formalities to take care of before I can reunite you with Peter." Ms. McNeill stated immediately getting down to business.

               "We understand." Alec replied and handed her the envelope that now only contained Peter's birth certificate as well as Lil Stevens', Lil's Marriage certificate, Lil's husbands death certificate and Lil's national insurance card. There were also some photographs of Will and Ray, Ray, and Will, Ray and Alec. 

               Will just nodded.

               "Peter was here on vacation with his aunt, I understand." Ms. McNeill stated, reading from her notes. "I am so sorry for your loss."

               "Thank you, it's a huge blow after losing Chris, the only family remaining on his side was Sally." Will replied, her voice trembling slightly. "We were very close…. I." ****

                Alec put his left arm comfortingly around her shoulder, and Will leaned into his embrace.

               "We had to identify her remains just before we came here." Alec explained. "It wasn't pretty, and because I'm Lil's brother and not Sally's, I couldn't be the one to identify her. At least they let me accompany Lil."  

               Will is now softly crying.  "Please, I just want to hold my baby, I won't believe he's safe 'til I hold him." She pleaded.

               Ms. McNeill swiftly glanced through all the items in the envelope, before replacing them and handing them back to Alec. She then picked up a form.  "Please sign these, then I'll take you to Peter, he's been packed and ready to go since half past six this morning." She informed them smiling.

               Will quickly signed the forms.

               A few moments later, Will, Alec and Ms. McNeill entered the living room, of the facility. Another member of staff had gone to collect Ray.

               Will fiddled with her medallion, as if it was a nervous habit, making sure that Ray would spot it the moment he entered the room.

               The transgenics could hear the staff member and Ray approaching, the staff member was telling Ray that his Uncle Alistair had accompanied his mother. They entered the room and without a moments hesitation Ray barrelled into a crouching Will's arms.

               "Mom!" He yelled as he ran to her.

               "Petey!" Will replied sounding ecstatic and relieved, tears streaming down her face.

               They hugged fiercely, Alec hunkered down and joined in the embrace.

               "Uncle Ali!" Ray yelled as he hugged both of them. "Mom don't cry, I'm okay."

               "I'm sorry baby, I've just been going crazy since I got the phone call….." Will tenderly replied, stroking his face, with her right hand, while still hugging him tightly with her left arm.

               "Aunt Sally…." Ray started to say and trailed off, snuggling further into the adults embrace.

               "She died instantly big guy." Alec tenderly assured Ray. "She didn't feel a thing."

               "Ali's right honey, Sally did not feel any pain." Will added her own gentle assurance.

               "That's what everyone said, but I didn't believe 'em." Ray confessed.  "I'm glad it didn't hurt."

               "It didn't." Will reiterated, still stroking him.

               Alec straightened up. He looked at Ms. McNeill and the staff member. "Thank you for taking care of Petey." He said smiling and offering them each his hand in turn.

               Will and Ray reluctantly broke their embrace and Will straightened, her left arm around Ray's shoulders, as if she could not bear to loose physical contact with him.

               Will removed a handkerchief from her pocket and dried her eyes. "Thank you for looking after Petey." She echoed Alec, and extended her right hand to both.

               They shook hands with her too.  The staff member who had escorted Ray, gave Alec his things, then left to collect the items that had belonged to Rebecca and Ray that the police had given to them since Ray was in their care.

               "It was our pleasure to look after such a lovely child." Ms. McNeill replied with a genuine smile. "I just wish that it could have been under different circumstances." She stated with regret.

               Will and Alec just nodded.

               "Thanks for taking care of me Ms. McNeill!" Ray added. "You're real nice!"

               "Why thank you young man." Ms. McNeill smiled down at him.

               The staff member returned with a colleague carrying Rebecca and Ray's other belongings. The transgenics took the items from them smiling and nodding their thanks before the two departed.

               "I'll walk you out." Ms. McNeill stated smiling. "I know that you must be in a hurry to get home, to get Peter back amongst familiar surroundings and playing with his friends."

               "Yes, we thought it best to get home as quickly as possible." Will agreed.

               They swiftly put the luggage into the rental car's large trunk and on the back seat, then Alec got in the drivers seat whilst Will and Ray got in the back.  Will had her arm around Ray, and he was leaning into her embrace as they drove off.  They remained in that position all the way to the airport, as Will told Ray, Alec's real name, that they were transgenics and then basically filled him in on their itinerary, then listened to his adventures since he left Seattle.  

               11:29am

               Just before they got to the airport.

               "Ray, as far as everyone is concerned I'm your mom and Alec is you uncle. Your dad died when you were a baby. Our surname after this flight is Wolfe, my first name is Wilhelmina, but I prefer to answer to Will and your new name is James, Jay for short, okay?" Will told him as they drove into the lane that would take them to the car rental garaging area.

               "James Wolfe. Jay Wolfe." Ray paused and grinned at her. "I love it, James is way cooler than Peter and my favourite soft toy, that Dad got me when I was a baby, was, is a wolf called Howler. And Jay for short is great 'cause it sounds so like Ray, I won't forget and not answer when you call it!"

               Both transgenics grinned back at him, but any further conversation was stopped by the arrival of a rental agency employee, wanting to check the car over and sign it back in.

               Forty one minutes later. 

               12:21pm.          

               Inside the airport terminal.

               After checking in their luggage and paying the extra weight fees Will, Alec and Jay had browsed through the shops, since they had a while to wait for their flight. 

               Will had decided that Jay might need something more than the games on her laptop, to keep him amused during the short plane journey to Atlanta and long drive to Canada. Alec had also decided to buy a couple of books to read.  They had just made their purchases and were leaving the shop when they were accosted by a complete stranger.

               "Oh he's adorable!" The woman exclaimed smiling at Jay.

               "Thank you." Will responded with a smile as they tried to move off.

               "And he looks so like you and your husband!" The woman continued to talk not taking the hint.

               "He's not my Dad, he's my Uncle!" Jay corrected her. "My Dad died when I was a baby." He told her in a matter of fact voice, the lie not bothering him in the least.

               "Oh I'm so sorry!" The woman replied with genuine remorse. 

               "Thank you." Will quietly responded. "I'm just glad I have James, I see so much of his father in him!"

               "There's not too much I hope!" Alec muttered so that only Will would hear she ignored him by a supreme effort of will.

               "I can see the family resemblance between you both now." The woman blithely carried on.

               Suddenly a flight was announced over the tannoy system.

               "That's our flight." Alec lyingly stated. "We better hurry, don't want to miss it!" 

               "Nice talking with you." Will said smiling politely.

               "You too dear have a nice flight!" The woman cheerfully responded.

               "You too." Will replied then began to walk away.

               "Bye!" Jay called cheerfully over his shoulder, as he walked away, his hand firmly held by Will's.

               Alec swiftly led them away from the mall area to a heavily populated waiting hall where they could hide. 

               They sat playing games on the laptop; working on the activity books and eating for the next four hours and seven minutes, waiting for their flight to finally be ready and wishing that they had just driven to Atlanta instead because then they would already be on their way to Montreal. 

               Both transgenics had thought it inadvisable to use the semi hypnotic trick again since they needed to be able to talk with Jay, keep him amused and short replies etcetera would look odd and draw more attention than sarcasm.

               16:56pm.

               The flight to Atlanta was finally called and with relieved sighs, the two Transgenic adults and one Familiar child swiftly gathered their belongings and rushed to the departure gate.

             

               Onboard an ancient 747 sitting on  the runway.

               Jay was seated in the window seat, Will was next to him and Alec was in the aisle seat so he could walk about and stretch his long legs every so often.

               Alec had decided a few minutes after getting on the plane that he wasn't in a reading mood and had returned to playing computer games with Jay, and helping him with the rest of the activity books that he had chosen. 

But those books were now finished and they had played each game at least eight times. 

               Will was trying to read one of the books that Alec had discarded, being in the middle seat with the two on either side of her playing together, was not helping her concentration, but both refused point blank to swap seats, getting identical pouts whenever she mentioned that swapping was a good idea.  

               Jay had quickly decided that he wanted to mimic Alec, hence the pouting.

               "Honey why don't you draw?" Will suggested in a patient tone.

                "Okay!" Jay replied grinning.

               "You know, I really wish the pulse hadn't happened, whose dumb idea was it to get rid of stewardesses!" Alec moaned to Will for the fifty seventh time since they left Seattle.

               "Like I told you the other times you asked, I don't know and could care less!" Was her aggravated reply.

               Alec pouted and turned his attention to Jay pointedly ignoring Will, which suited her fine, since for the last ten minutes or so he'd been complaining that he was bored, having forgotten or just beyond caring that they were not supposed to draw attention to themselves.

                Jay was drawing on the laptop, and Alec decided to help. Will did not bother to mention swapping seats.

               They had been stuck on the runway for almost an hour before they were eventually given clearance to take off.                           

               Half way to Atlanta.

     

               "Mom I'm bored!" Jay whined.

               "Me too!" Alec agreed, forgetting that he was giving Will the silent treatment.

               Will rolled her eyes and placed her book in her bag.

               "Will we're bored!" Alec whined again, waving his hand in front of her face.

               "Hangman!" Will responded grabbing Alec's hand and glaring at him.

               "Uh quit glaring at me while you say that!" Alec said retrieving his hand and shifting uncomfortably at the murderous look in his elder sister's eyes.

               Jay getting what Alec meant dissolved into a giggling fit.

               "Hey thanks for your support buddy!" Alec told him sarcastically. "Instead of giggling you should be telling your mom that you'd hate it if she killed me!" He started pouting as Jay continued to giggle.

               Will had quickly removed the laptop from the shelf in front of the giggling child, afraid that it might be accidentally damaged in his fit. She ignored the two males as she typed in a game of hangman. "Ready, if you're both finished with giggling and pouting?" Will queried, her tone amused.

               Jay smothered his giggles and grinned at her. "I'm going first!" He cried. "Hmmm I'll have an 'E' please!" 

               "What's the subject?" Alec asked looking at the laptop in front of Will. "Animal, vegetable, mineral, TV show or film?"

               "Animal." Will replied as she entered Jay's pick into the computer.

                E _ E _ _ _ _ _ 

               "Okay then I want an 'A'." Alec stated having easily guessed the word, but realising that Will would not make the game impossible for a seven year old, even one as bright as Jay, to win.

               Will nodded at Alec, knowing that he had got the answer straight away, but was playing along anyway.

               E _ E _ _ A _ _ 

               Jay concentrated on the letters and then yelped. "Elephant! I win!" He then hopped onto Will's lap and began to type in his choice.  "Close your eyes please, I wanna write out the word first and spell check it." He pretty much ordered.              

               "Takes after his daddy." Alec moaned sarcastically in Will's ear.

               Will just grinned in reply.

               Both adults then obeyed the directive.

               "Okay done you can open your eyes!" Ray ordered. "It's a plant."

              _ _ _ _ _ _   _ _ _ 

               Will spoke first. "I'll have a 'T' please."

               "No 'T' sorry." Jay replied grinning as he typed in a 'T' in the not used section. He was still seated on Will's lap.

               "'E' please." Alec asked grinning at Will.

               "No 'E' either!" Jay giggled pleased that he had picked a hard answer.

               Over the giggling child's head both transgenics mouthed the correct answer to each other….. Poison Ivy. Then used eye and slight hand gestures to indicate that they would both pretend to have trouble with Jay's choices, since it made him happy.

               They happily played hangman for the rest of the flight. Jay was loving the fact that he could out smart his two new relatives, both of whom were careful to make their deception look real and not forced sometimes getting a correct letter or two for his games straight away. 

               Evening.

               The plane touched down in AtlantaGeorgia.

           

               Alec, Will and Jay took a cab to the address that Logan had supplied and took possession of a medium sized motor home, that Eye's Only had purchased for Will. 

                "Okay now the vehicle has both a gas and an alcohol tank, plus for the electrics, hot water and appliances, you have the solar panels and mini wind turbine on the roof. I filled up both the gas and alcohol tanks ready for you." The owner of the vehicle lot told them

               He also agreed to their staying on the lot overnight, since it was evening and he understood that they would prefer having a goodnights sleep, before they started their journey.  

               After thanking him they put their belongings onboard and before surveying their new home for the next few days, they went to the neighbouring supermarket to stock up on provisions.

               19:59pm.

               Motor  Home.

               They returned to the motor home fully laden, with enough food for ten humans for well over a week, which would hopefully last the two Transgenics and one Familiar until they crossed into Canada and arrived at Montreal.

               "This is so cool!" Jay yelled as he explored the vehicle, bouncing on the top bunk bed that he had immediately claimed for his own.

               Will and Alec were standing next to the master bedroom, after dumping all their shopping in the kitchen area, they had paused only long enough to put away the frozen and perishable stuff. 

               The luggage was still piled high in the lounge area.

               "So who gets the double bed?" Alec asked retrieving a coin from his pocket. "Heads I get the bed!"

               Alec flipped the coin, before Will could respond.

               Will deftly grabbed the coin from mid air.

               "Hey!" Alec protested pouting.

               "If we were going to decide by a coin toss we would most definitely not use your double headed one!" Will sarcastically informed him.

               Jay climbed off his bunk bed at this and wandered from his room to investigate.

               "Double headed? Cool! Can I see Mom?" He asked holding out his hand.

               Will casually dropped the coin onto his outstretched palm.

               "C'mon, Will I forgot I had that!" Alec told her trying desperately to look innocent and failing miserably.

               "Yeah right!" She replied with a glare "Do I look as if I just got off the bus?"

               Jay started laughing as he handed the coin back to Alec, who absently took it.

               "You're funny when you fight!" Jay giggled. "This trip is gonna be fun!"

               "Oh yeah it'll be real fun, trapped in a motor home together for days!" Will sarcastically replied rolled her eyes and continued to glare at her brother.

               "Hey! I don't much care for the idea either ya know!" Alec snapped returning her glare.

               Jay convulsed into a bigger giggle fit at their fighting.  

               Both transgenics looked at him in astonishment, then looked at each other, shrugged and mouthed Familiars, glares where forgotten as they watched the child for almost three minutes, as he continued to giggle helplessly.

               Jay eventually straightened up, his giggle fit had subsided into a huge grin. "You can play rock paper scissors!" He suggested.

               "Fine by me." Alec responded with a shrug.

               "Yep!" Will replied grinning at her son.

               Both transgenics stuck out their arms and on the count of three made a shape with their hands.  Alec chose scissors and Will chose paper.

               "Yay! I win!" Alec yelled in jubilation, bouncing from one foot to the other.

               Will narrowed her eyes at him. "How much candy soft drinks have you consumed today?" She asked in an icy voice.

               Alec stopped bouncing and looked at her startled. "Not enough for more black coffee treatment. Why?"

               "You were bouncing around, a heck of a lot more than winning the double bed required." Will drolly pointed out.

               "Oh. Nah I'm just pleased to be off the dang plane!" He replied grinning.

               "Good 'cause being stuck on a motor home with a hyper you would lead to murder!" Will responded grinning at him.

               "I'm really bad when I O.D on sugar huh?" Alec queried.

               Jay, realising that they weren't going to entertain him by arguing some more wandered into the kitchen area and started unloading the rest of the groceries, leaving out the junk food that he wanted to eat for supper.

               "Times your normal traits by one hundred and that's you on a sugar high!" Will told him and rolled her eyes. "The normal you can be irritating but the hyped up you….."

               Alec held up his hands. "Okay I get your point! I promise not to consume too much sugar okay?"

               "Yep!" Will grinned at him. "Speaking of consuming sugar we better go see what Jay's up to!"

               They quickly entered the kitchen/lounge area and Will stopped Jay just before he was going to open a packet of fudge pieces.

               "Thanks for putting away the shopping kiddo." She said ruffling his hair. She then placed the fudge into a cupboard along with the other junk type food that was still on the counter.

               Jay pouted. "Mooommm!" He whined. "That's my supper."

               At this Alec burst out laughing and was rewarded by a glare from Will, who then returned a non lethal look to Jay.

               "Fudge and other candies are a treat not a meal." She patiently explained.

               "But you and Alec are Transgenics, and I'm a Familiar, why do we have to follow stupid Ordinaries rules?" Jay whined.

               "He's got a point." Alec agreed, then swiftly retreated at her lethal glare, he grabbed his bag and went to hide in his room, out of range of the knives that the peeved transgenic had to hand.

               Blanking her face, Will returned her attention to her newly acquired son.  "So would your dad let you eat anything you want?" She casually asked as she started going through the cupboards, looking for things for a proper supper.

               "Of course not!" Jay responded automatically, then slapped his hands over his mouth and looked mournfully at her.

               "Thought not." Will told the downcast boy, placing bread, cheese, butter and some bags of chips on the counter, then she retrieved a two litre bottle of cherry cola.  "Alec, come and make your own sandwiches!" She yelled as she grabbed a plate and a knife and swiftly made up some for Jay and herself.

               Jay realising that Will was not going to comment further on his trying to manipulate her, collected three glasses and took the cola and multi pack of chips into the lounge area, dodging the luggage.

               Alec passed Jay and grinned at him.  "Will chips and cherry cola are considered junk food you know." He told her as he grabbed the bread and began making his own sandwiches.

               Will ignored him, and finished making Jay and her sandwiches, before squeezing past Alec and taking a seat opposite Jay, placing the food on the table. 

                "Hey Jay where'd you put the pickle spread?" Alec asked, slightly aggrieved that Will had failed to rise to his bait.

               "Top cupboard, near the door!" Jay responded as he carefully poured out the cola.

               Alec retrieved the pickle spread and added some to his sandwiches, then joined the others at the table, he sat down opposite Will, Jay had moved to the seat in front of the window and was hungrily devouring his sandwich and chips, pausing only to slurp cola through a straw.

               They ate in silence, all were tired from their long day.  They had soon finished their meal.

               21:18pm.

               "Okay Jay, bedtime." Will told the youngster.

               "I don't wanna go to bed!" He replied pouting.

               "It's not up for debate soldier!" Will responded unconsciously mimicking Lydecker and stood up to let Jay move past.

               Alec looked at her in shock, completely stunned that she would revert to Manticore after being a parent for only one day.

               Jay looked at Will and seeing a look similar to one that he had seen many times upon his beloved father's face, knew better than to push his luck, he swiftly slid out from behind the table, grabbed his holdall and entered the shower room, emerging a few minutes later, he went into his room, quickly changed into his pyjamas and climbed into the top bunk.

               Neither transgenic had spoken whilst Jay prepared and went to bed, Alec was still in shock.

               Will went over to her holdall and retrieved the bear in flying gear, moved into their room and looked up at Jay.  "Thank you." She said softly. "Here." She handed him the bear. "You sounded wistful when you spoke of Howler, so I thought you might like Murdoch for company.  Snuggle down and I'll tell you a story."

               Jay grinned at her. "Thanks Mom! I wish I could have taken Howler to school, but then he wouldn't be with Dad, and Daddy needs the company."  Jay got a far away sad, look in his eyes.  "Daddy must be lonely, we used to do lots of stuff together, if he was home he always read me to sleep, sometimes he'd read to me over the phone."

               Will stood on a bunk ladder rung and gently stroked his hair.

               "I miss him." He told her. "Aunt Becky said that I couldn't ever see him again 'cause he killed Mommy and that he was a Familiar and wanted to kill all Ordinaries and that he was bad." He told her his lip trembling.  "I'm a Familiar does that make me bad too? Daddy's not bad he only did what he had to do!" He hugged the bear tightly.

               Will swiftly climbed onto Jay's bunk and hugged him, he melted into her arms.

               "Your Aunt Becky was wrong honey!" She firmly told him. "Familiars are neither bad or good, they just have a different agenda to most people, and deciding if someone is bad or good depends on your view point. Becky as an Ordinary considers Familiars to be bad, you as a Familiar consider them to be good, you're both correct from your own point of view!"

               Jay looked at her beseechingly. "Do you think that Daddy's bad?"

               "A bad person in general no, a bad person to transgenics yes." Will answered him honestly, feeling that it was the best route.  "I know that he was and is an extremely caring father and that he loves you very much and is trying his hardest to find you!"

               Jay grinned at her. "He is?"

               "Yes honey, but he can't until all this Coming stuff is sorted out, I don't want you getting caught in the middle." Will replied.

               "But when it's all sorted and the Conclave realise that transgenics are cool you'll let me see Dad." Jay confidently stated extricating himself from her hug to look into her eyes.

               "When it's all sorted out, yes I promise to let you see Ames." Will swore and she meant it.

               "Thank you!" He yelled and hugged her around the neck. "You were gonna tell me a story." He reminded her pulling out of the hug.

               Will laughed and nodded then swiftly climbed from his bunk. Jay lay down, Murdoch hugged tightly in his arms.

               "Now if you're comfortable I'll tell you the story okay?" Will queried grinning up at him.

                "That'd be great!" Jay grinned down at her. 

               "Okay then." She paused and hopped onto her own bunk. "A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, their lived a bounty hunter named Boba Fett……"

               Thirty seven minutes later and Will left a peacefully sleeping Jay and rejoined Alec in the lounge, Alec had stored all the luggage, but Will's holdall, whilst she was with Jay.

               "Good handling of a tough subject!" Alec complimented her.

               Will looked at him and gave him a weak smile. "Thanks I knew it'd come up eventually, but not quite so soon." 

                "Well you did a good job of being neutral!" Alec replied and seeing that she did not wish to pursue the subject.   "Nice story…. Odd choice of hero though." he commented grinning at her.

               Will shrugged her shoulder. "What can I say, I've always had a thing for him."

               "Wait a minute you called Ames Boba Fett!" Alec accused a shocked expression on his face for the second time in forty odd minutes.

               Will rolled her eyes.  "And you called me Leia!" She reminded him. "Remember the female you have X rated dreams about!"

               Alec blushed scarlet and raised his hands. "Okay point!"

               "Alec I'm tired, I'm gonna go to the bat.. shower room then go to bed." She told him wearily as she grabbed her holdall and entered the shower room, returning a few minutes later she walked over to Alec, who was eating another bag of chips, and dropped a kiss on his head. "Good night bro sweet dreams!" she quietly called over her shoulder as she swiftly entered hers and Jay's room.


	5. Chapter 5

11th to 23rd Nov 2003

Unwelcome Ties      By Western Blakehawke.

Set after LATR.  2021.

Ames meets the first human looking transgenic. Alec is reunited with a sibling and takes a road trip.

**Chapter 5**

               **Day Three.******

               5:27am.

               Jay had awoken and feeling hungry, quietly climbed from his bunk and jumped onto a still sleeping Will.

               Will reacted instinctively and nearly decapitated Jay, only her lightning reflexes stopped her from killing him, as she caught his scent, then opened her eyes.  "Damn it Jay!" She yelled eyes blazing. "Never do that to a transgenic! I could have killed you! I very nearly did!

               Jay just sat on the bed in shocked silence, as Alec raced into the room, wearing only his black jeans and dripping wet from his shower.

               "What happened?" He asked looking from one to the other. "I heard you yelling at Jay Will, what happened?"

               "I almost killed him!" Will said her tone still angry and shocked.

               "Wha… how?" Alec responded in surprise.

               "I….I  jumped on her." Jay explained quietly, his voice quivering. "I'm sorry."

               Will leaned forward and pulled him into a tight embrace.  "Honey, I'm sorry I shouldn't have yelled at you, but you scared the hell out of me." She gently told him. "I came so close to killing you!"

               Alec realising what must have happened sat on the bunk and engulfed them both in a damp hug.  "Kiddo, we both love you, we would hate for anything to happen to you especially at our hands." Alec quietly and sincerely told the boy.

               Jay astonished, looked at both of the adults tenderly hugging him. "You only met me yesterday but you love me?" He asked grinning.

               "Yep! I never believed in love at first sight until I met you." Will confirmed returning his grin.

               "Yeah you grew on me on the plane journey!" Alec quipped grinning too.

               Jay could tell that both were sincere and couldn't understand why The Conclave wanted to kill transgenics, why his Dad wanted to kill them. "I promise I won't wake you, either of you or any transgenic by jumping on them or grabbing them or touching them in anyway."

               "Did your dad give you that list for himself?" Will asked grinning as she and Alec released Jay from his hug.

               "Yep!" Jay emphasised with a swift sharp nod then hopped off the bunk and grabbed Alec's hand and tried to pull him from the room. "Uncle Alec, I'm hungry!"

               Alec remained on the bunk for all Jay's efforts.

               "Ah, why tell me when Will's right here?" Alec asked confused.

               "'Cause you're up and she isn't!" Jay responded. "Feed me!" He ordered.

               Will started laughing at his reasoning and how like Ames he sounded and looked. Alec rolled his eyes at her and finally allowed himself to be dragged from the room.

               "I want pancakes with maple syrup." Jay informed him.

               "Jay if you don't want to get food poisoning, better have toast or cereal!" Will laughingly called after them.

               "Yeah, toast or cereal sound good, don't they Jay?" Alec said trying to convince the boy.

               "But I want pancakes! You said you love me! So prove it and make me pancakes!" Jay ordered as they entered the kitchen.

               "Will help!" Alec yelled in desperation.

               "I'll make you pancakes!" Will said grinning as she followed them into the kitchen area, still in her short pyjamas.  She swiftly started making up the pancake mixture.

               "Me too?" Alec asked hopefully as he sat down opposite Jay.

               Will grinned at him. "Sure!"

               "Word of advice kid, the only X-series I've ever met who can cook is Will, we others tend to uh burn water." Alec informed Jay. "So if you don't was a case of food poisoning never let an X series other than your mom cook for you."

               "Okay!" Jay replied grinning, as he played with the bottle of maple syrup that he had brought to the table.

               Will rolled her eyes. "Cooking's not hard all you have to do is read the instructions or follow a recipe." 

               "I've tried, but the results were inedible." Alec groused. "You obviously got some genetic skill that they left out of the other X series."

               "Tinga could cook, she worked in a bakery." Will archly reminded him as she brought three glasses of orange juice over to the table, on a tray with two plates each piled high with pancakes.

               "Okay, she was the exception to the rule." Alec responded as he took one of the plates, a fork and his glass of orange juice then waited for Jay to finish with the maple syrup. "Aren't you having any?"

               The sound of toast popping. 

               Will moved back into the kitchen area.  "I hate sweet stuff for breakfast, I'm having toast." She replied over her shoulder, as she buttered the six slices.

               "Oh yeah right now that you mention it, I've only ever seen you eat either toast or savoury cereal for breakfast." Alec commented with his mouth full.

               Will looked up from buttering the final piece of toast and glared at Alec.  "Don't speak with your mouth full." 

               Alec swallowed his mouthful before replying as she came and sat down. "It's never bothered you before." He replied in a hurt tone. "You never complained before."

               "Yes I did but after the first seventy two complaints fell on deaf ears, I quit." Will drolly responded. 

               "Oh yeah, I forgot!" Alec replied deep in thought as he recalled each of the times she'd mentioned his speaking with his mouth full.

               Jay was busy eating his pancakes too interested in them, to be bothered joining in the conversation.

               "Why bug me about it now?" Alec asked after he swallowed another mouthful, then realising he looked at Jay. "Oh right!"

               "What?" Jay asked the two adults after swallowing his orange juice.

               "She thinks you might learn bad habits from me, 'cause you started mimicking me." Alec explained grinning.

               "Oh!" Jay looked at Will. "Don't worry Mom I haven't talked with my mouth full since I was little, it's rude." He ingenuously informed her.

               Will burst out laughing at the look on Alec's face at Jay's honest reply. 

               "What?" Jay asked again looking from a laughing Will to a pouting Alec and back to Will. "What'd I say?"

               "Fine, I'll start acting like an adult and quit talking with my mouth full." Alec stated rolling his eyes, a grin starting to materialise on his face.

               Will was still laughing and Jay sensing that neither was going to let him in on the joke went back to savouring his pancakes.

               Twenty minutes and more pancakes later.

               "We better head out, Alec you need to finish dressing and then you can take the first driving shift." Will instructed. "Jay c'mon you need to shower clean your teeth etcetera and get dressed, then I can." She moved out off the way so that Jay could leave the table.

               "Okay!" Jay grinned at the adults and happily bounded to the shower room.

               Alec laughed and turned to look at Will shaking his head he said in an undertone. "Sheesh, who'd have thought that I would fall for Ames White's kid, he must take after his mother, lets hope he takes after her."

               "So you don't mind that I adopted him after all then." Will stated grinning at him.

               "Hell no! The kid's got taste! He decided to mimic me after all!" Alec said smugly as he grinned at her.

               "He's a child, so of course he'd adore and want to mimic an older child." Will drolly responded.

               "Hey!" Alec pouted at her. "Not funny! Just because you're seven years older than me, you think you can call me a kid." He grabbed her and they began tussling playfully ala kittens or wolf cubs.

               They were still tussling a few minutes later when Jay emerged from the shower room, he grinned at the odd sight of two adults play fighting and sat down to watch the show. Will and Alec continued to play for a few minutes, rolling about on the floor, then Will caught site of Jay and pulled the play punch that she was throwing at Alec.

               "What?" Alec asked confused

               "Damn! We can't be playing we have to get to Canada!" Will replied, standing up and brushing herself down, she glanced at the clock in the motor homes cab. 

               6:31am.

               Alec also stood and brushed himself down as Will rushed past him to the shower room, he then went to his room and emerged a few moments later fully dressed, Jay was still sitting mirthfully watching the antics of his newly acquired mom and uncle.  Alec grinned at him as he passed by and sat in the drivers seat, before he could start the vehicle, Jay had joined him and was swiftly buckling his seat belt.

               "You're my co-pilot huh" Alec joked grinning at the boy.

               "Yep!" Jay returned his grin. "Hey a GPS cool!" He yelled seeing it on the dashboard.

               "Yeah it came with the motor home." Alec told him as he started the vehicle up and manoeuvred out of the lot.

               "This is gonna be fun!" Jay cried bouncing in his seat. "Can we pick up a hitch hiker?"

               Alec looked at him then quickly returned his eyes to the road. "Ah no, no picking up of hitch hikers."

               "Awwwwww, I wanted to see you and Mom beat the crap out of an axe wielding maniac!" Jay whined pouting.

               "Who let you watch that movie?" Will queried in surprise and shock as she stuck her head into the cab.

               "No one let me watch it, I just saw some of it when I couldn't sleep so I went downstairs and put the TV on." Jay explained. "When Dad got home and saw what I was watching he got all mad and glary." He sounded puzzled over this. "He picked me up and took me to bed and made me promise that if I couldn't sleep that I'd watch one of my DVDs not whatever was on the TV."

               "Your dad was right!" Alec told him. "Those movies have an eighteen certificate for a reason!" 

               "Yeah Jay that rule is still in force okay!" Will responded. "You said that your DVDs are in the luggage right?"

               "Yep! Hey can I watch one on your laptop?" Jay asked unbuckling his belt.

               Will grinned at him. "Sure!" She moved out of the way as he bounded past her and into Alec's room to collect his DVDs, whilst Will went to set up the laptop.

               Jay raced back into the room and went through the merits of each of his DVDs with Will before deciding to watch the Aristocats.

               Will started laughing and called out. "Hey Alec, I just thought up the perfect alias for you!"

               "What?" Alec asked, knowing from her mirth that he probably wouldn't like the answer.

               "Thomas O'Mally!" Will yelled then she and Jay both convulsed into giggles.

               Alec also got the reference.  "Oh hilarious!" He stated sarcastically rolling his eyes. 

               After a few moments Will and Jay's giggling subsided and they settled down to watch the movie, whilst Alec shoved a favourite CD into the player and slipped on a pair of headphones.

               Ninety minutes or so later Will joined Alec in the cab, Jay was watching a Power Ranger's DVD and Will was not keen on any incarnation of that show.

               "Let me know when you want a break." She told Alec, as she settled comfortably into her seat.

               Alec grinned at her. "I'm good for a while, I love to drive."

               She grinned back at him as they settled into a companionable silence. They drove in silence for the next two and a half hours or so, grinning at each other whenever Jay frequently spoke along with his DVDs or started guffawing.

               9:24am.

               They were now travelling through more countrified areas.

               "So you really think we've share some DNA?" Alec asked recalling their conversation from two days ago.

               "Yep! Given our similar personalities and colouring, I'd say it was a pretty sure bet!" Will replied, not thinking it the least odd that Alec should suddenly bring up an old conversation.  "But we obviously don't have the same DNA for height." The 4'10" transgenic quipped grinning but also sounding slightly wistful.

               Alec looked at her and patted her arm. "Hey it's okay to be a petite female, very attractive actually, but a short male….." 

               Jay switched off the laptop and came forward into the cab. "Do you think I'll be tall?" he asked.

               Will released her seat belt and moved over on the bench seat, then re buckled herself in as Jay took her space, buckling himself in as she answered his question. "Yep, you'll be at least 5'10" like your dad, you could even grow taller." She told him ruffling his hair affectionately.

               "Cool!" Jay responded grinning at her as he moved his head away from her hand.

               Taking the hint Will placed her hand in her lap and grinned at him.

               "What is it with you and ruffling people's hair?" Alec curiously asked her.

               Will shrugged her right shoulder.  "Not sure, I think it's a wolf thing, you know blended with human turns rubbing my head against someone I care for into ruffling their hair." She replied looking thoughtful.

               "Oh." Alec responded grinning.

               "Lets play a game!" Jay piped up. "Okay you have to try and spot certain things, like a certain colour car, the first person to spot it wins and gets to choose the next thing."

               "Sounds a bit like an exercise we did at Manticore." Alec commented.

               "Just what I was thinking." Will replied nodding.

               "You don't want to play it then 'cause it reminds you of Manticore?" Jay asked disappointed.

               "We'll play!" Will responded grinning at him, but refraining from ruffling his hair with an effort.

               "Yeah buddy, we do a lot of stuff that reminds us of Manticore." Alec reassured him also grinning.

               "Great!" Jay responded bouncing on his seat. "I get first choice!" Thinks for a few moments. "Okay first one to see a blue car wins!"

               The three of them happily played the game until their stomachs started to rumble, Jay got up, so that Will could go make them some lunch, while he and Alec had a highly animated discussion about Looney toon characters, having discovered from Jay's DVD collection that it was an interest that they both shared, they quickly became engrossed in discussing the relative merits of each character.

               1:02pm.

               "Alec, you want to find somewhere to pull over, lunch will be ready in seven minutes!" Will called.

               "Okay!" Alec replied.

               Jay also looked for a likely spot. "There!" he yelled pointing to a picnicking place with a car park.

               "Perfect! Well spotted!" Alec told him ruffling his hair as he pulled into the car park. 

               "Hey, I thought you hated when Mom does that to you?" Jay asked leaning away from him and pouting.

               "Sorry sport couldn't help myself!" Alec responded grinning at him completely unrepentant.

               Jay grinned in response. "Just don't do it in public okay!" he ordered.

               "No Sir!" Alec replied saluting him.

               This caused Jay to dissolve into a fit of giggles.

               Alec swiftly parked the motor home, undid his seat belt, then undid Jay's and hoisting the still giggling seven year old onto his right shoulder, entered the body of the motor home, he deposited Jay onto his preferred seat and sat in his own. 

               Will turned around from cooking and grinned at them. "Be ready in a minute."

               Alec sniffed the air in appreciation.  "Burgers and fries, that's junk food you know." He quipped trying to wind Will up.

               "Yep, but I'm the parent I can be a hypocrite!" Will replied not turning around as she concentrated on making up the burgers.

               "I'll get the cola." Alec stated having noticed that there was none ready to be served.

               "Big surprise." Will replied and dodged past him carrying four burgers in rolls and a huge platter of fries on the tray. She quickly transferred the food onto the waiting plates and Jay quickly began pouring on the ketchup that he had picked up on sitting down. Will sat down.

               Alec returned with the cherry cola and filled the three glasses then sat and began eating too. Alec paused and swallowed his mouthful of food.  "Hey, are these veggie burgers?" He asked finally recalling that Will had told him weeks ago that she was a vegetarian.

               "Of course Alec, all the so called meat I've been serving you for weeks, is actually made from mushrooms and other stuff." Will responded drolly.

               Jay couldn't care less what the burger was made of, since it tasted good so he just kept eating and watched the adults.

               Alec looked at the burger in his hands. "Even the turkey with the roasts?" He asked in astonishment.

               "Yep!" Will grinned at him.

               "Hey rabbit food aint half bad!" He quipped and started to devour his second burger.

               Will rolled her eyes and continued her own meal. 

               13:33pm.

               "Okay I cooked so you get clean up detail!" Will informed the two males and grinned at their reactions.

               "Will I'm to full to move!" Alec whined, slouching in his seat and giving her a pathetic look.

               "Me too!" Jay echoed and copied Alec's position and turned pleading eyes on Will.

               Will shrugged and stood up. "They'll wait!" She called over her shoulder as she exited the vehicle.

               Jay and Alec looked at each other frowning.

               "Should have known it wouldn't work on Will!" Alec moaned as he stood up and started loading up the tray. "Hey buddy, I'm not doing this all on my own, I'll wash you can dry!"

               "Awwww Uncle Alec!" Jay tried his beseeching look on him and failed miserably again.

               "Look the sooner we get started the sooner we get to explore the park." Alec responded moving into the kitchen.

               Jay let out a long suffering sigh and followed him.

               Will returned a few minutes later from her breath of fresh air to find the two males drenched.

               "I meant soak the dishes not yourselves!" She quipped grinning at the pair.

               Alec groaned. "Bad pun!" He said rolling his eyes and grabbing a towel started to dry himself off.

               Jay just dissolved into giggles.

               "You didn't want clean up detail, so you double your workload by having a bubble fight." Will stated amused as she returned to the great outdoors. "Now as well as clearing up after lunch, you get to mop up all that water!" She called over her shoulder before shutting the door.

               This dose of reality stopped Jay's giggles and Alec's attempts to dry himself off, 'cause he was too lazy to get changed.

               "Aww flip!" Alec cursed glaring at the Will through the window, she turned and waved at him, having heard the curse through the open window, she was grinning.

               Twenty one minutes later.

               Alec and Jay finished clearing up and after changing into dry clothes, they joined Will outside. Jay raced over to the play area and started playing, whilst Alec flopped down on the bench beside Will.

               "I hate clearing up!" He groused.

               "Well you could cook but since it'd be inedible……" Will responded her eyes still closed as she relaxed it the sun.

               "Yeah!" Alec sighed. "Guess I'm on clean up for the entire trip."

               "Mmmmhmmm." Will replied.

               Seeing that Will was not in a talkative mood, Alec just lounged and watched Jay as he played happily.

               14:49am.

               Will looked at her watch. "Jay honey time to go!" she called as she stood.

               Alec had been napping and jumped awake at her yell. "Wh… Oh we're leaving?"

               "Yep!" Will replied and headed for the motor home.

               Jay raced past her and got to the door first. "I win!"

               Will grinned at him. "And your prize is some fudge!"

               "Great!" Jay yelled as he bounded aboard.

               Will followed and Alec brought up the rear.

               "Hey I want some fudge too!" He commented pouting.

               "There's plenty for all of us." Will told him patiently.

               Jay hearing this divided the fudge between them in three bowls then brought them over to the table, after he was seated Will sat and the three of them ate their fudge in silence.   

                North Carolina.      

               Later that evening.

               20:04pm.

               They finally pulled into the town where an Eye's Only contact would meet them with a laser for removing skin blemishes; birthmarks and tattoos. 

               Since Will planned on having transgenic visitors and could also expect her home to be used as a safe house in emergencies, she had asked Logan to acquire a laser that she could keep.

               They parked on the outskirts and Alec went to the arranged meeting place. Forty eight minutes later he returned with the laser and they headed off again, they were on their way to a campsite because Will and Alec had figured it was for the best if they acted like tourists, rather than fugitives. They soon found a campsite and bedded down

               **Day Four.******

               06:01am.

               They had left the campsite after Will had again made Alec and Jay a breakfast of pancakes. Alec still insisted on driving so Jay and Will played computer games and drew. Will made sandwiches for lunch and Alec ate his as he drove. Will then introduced Jay to the delights of nineteen eighties television with her DVDs of The A-Team, Airwolf and Knight Rider and they sat watching these for hours.

                Virginia.

               20:01pm.

               Alec was driving and Will and Jay were seated in the cab with him, Will was by the cab door, they had been playing word games for an hour or so.

               "Stop!" Will suddenly yelled and hopped out of the cab as soon as Alec reflexively hit the brakes on her command.

               "Hey what….." Alec called after the rapidly moving transgenic, she ignored him.

                Alec glanced at Jay who silently shrugged.

                "Females!" Alec said exasperated wondering what Will had spotted.

               Sixteen minutes later.

               A grinning Will returned and was followed by seven kids, who were carrying bags and also had four cats and two large dogs, she opened the door in the body of the motor home and quickly ushered them inside.

               Alec and Jay moved from the cab into the motor home just as Will shut the door. The dogs started leaping up at Alec and licking him.

               "Will would you control you relatives!" Alec asked sarcastically as he tried to gently fend off the two dogs who were determined to lick him to death.

                Will made a sound low in her throat and the dogs immediately came to her side.

                "Thank you!" Alec sarcastically stated as he grabbed some kitchen towel and began wiping the slobber off himself. 

                Jay and the other children were all laughing hysterically from the moment Alec asked Will for help. 

               "You're welcome." Will grinned at him whilst she made a fuss of the dogs. "They were only being friendly."

               "What did you say to them, the dogs on the way here, that they needed to befriend me, make me love 'em?" Alec queried sounding disgruntled, still wiping off slobber.

               "Yep!" Will replied not bothered that he had figured out her scheme.

               At this odd conversation the kids stopped laughing and looked backward and forwards between Will and Alec.

               "Mom can talk to dogs? Cool!" Jay yelled jumping up and down.

               "Yes I'm telepathic with all canines…. dogs, wolves, foxes…. we talk in pictures rather than words." Will acknowledged.

               Alec turned his attention to the new non furred arrivals.  "Will what the hell is going……" Alec trailed off as he recognized five of the kids. "What the hell are you guys doing in Virginia near Washington D.C! You're supposed to be in Canada!"

               The four X6's and three X8's looked at each over guiltily. Two of the X8's were identical twin girls, twins not clones.

               "We did go to Canada." Fixit told him with a guilty look. 

               "Yeah, we travelled across Canada and ended up back in the states." Zero added glaring at Alec.

               Alec flopped onto a seat.  "Idiots! You were reasonably save in Canada! Have you forgotten that we're being hunted by a…."

               "Alec!" Will quickly interrupted him. "The kids are coming to Canada with us, they will live with me and Jay."

               "Cool!" Jay yelled at the thought of siblings.

               "Now wait a minute Will we said we'd accept a lift back to Canada from you but nothing else." Bullet pointed out glaring at her stubbornly.

               Will looked at the kids her face impassive. "Are you defying my orders soldier!" She snapped.

               "No Ma'am!" Bullet snapped back as he and the other X kids automatically snapped to attention at her tone.

               "Good." Will smiled. "Alec if you'll get us to that campsite I'll start cooking dinner." She moved past the still rigid kids into the kitchen. "Dismissed!"

               The X kids relaxed at the word and looked around, Alec went back into the cab and resumed their journey, he planned on having a long talk with Will after dinner.

               "C'mon, I'll show you round!" Jay offered. "I'm Jay and I'm seven!"

               "Bullet seventeen."

               "Ralph fifthteen."

               "Bugler eight."

               "Kia six."

                "Kat six."

                "Fixit sixteen."

               "Zero fifthteen."

               They told Jay as they followed him.

               "Cool! And your dogs and cats?" Jay asked.

                The children still carried the cats, the dogs had stayed with Will. They had put their bags down in the lounge.

               "The cats are Eeeeny; Meeeny; Miney  and Mo." Zero stated pointing to each as he said their name. 

               "The dogs are Dack and Trixy." Ralph added. "Dack's the large black male and Trixy's the smaller black and brown female."

               "Great! I always wanted siblings and pets now I've got both!" Jay ecstatically told them bouncing up and down.

               At a deserted campsite.

               21:21pm.

               They had finished dinner and the X kids had explained as they ate how they ended up in Virginia and that they had found the twins just before they got to Canada.

               "Alec I know you wanted to talk to me." Will said standing up from sitting cross legged on the floor and lifting the tray off her knees as she did so.  "We'll speak outside. Kids you can watch one DVD then bed."

               "Awww Mom." Jay whined. "Can't we watch you fight!" He turned to his newly acquired siblings. "They're funny when they argue!" He grinned.

               "No." Will stated firmly and exited the vehicle to the sounds of Jay's grumbling.

               Alec chose a DVD and stuck it in the laptop and turned it on.  "Here watch this, it's good." He ordered before following Will.                           

                The sounds of Star Wars could be heard from outside as Alec joined Will on a bench about thirty metres from the motor home.

               "Eight kids are you insane!" Alec started as soon as he sat down.

               "I'm part wolf remember we always have a lot of cubs." Will patiently reminded him

               "Seven more people crammed in the motor home, plus four cats and two big dogs!" Alec yelled in reply. "Are you completely insane!"

               "Alec it's not up for debate! They are staying!" Will growled baring her teeth slightly.

               "Down girl!" Alec responded holding up his hands in a conciliatory gesture.  "Will the dogs are male and female and one of the cats is a tom, you're gonna end up with loads of dogs and cats!" 

                "I already confirmed with the kids what my nose told me, that the animals had been neutered." Will informed him. With a deep breath she controlled her temper and then tried another tack.   "C'mon Alec I couldn't just let you drive by after I scented Ralph." She looked imploringly at him.

               Alec sighed. "I know, it's just that ten people, four cats and two dogs crammed into a motor home for the next few days is gonna be murder!"

               Will patted him on the arm and grinned. "We'll cope!"

               "We're gonna need more provisions, including sleeping bags, the blankets the kids have aren't good enough." Alec replied.

               "There's a large town a few miles from here, we'll provision there tomorrow." She responded. "C'mon we need to sort things out with the kids, starting with their new names!" Will stood up and headed back to the motor home.

               Alec followed her laughing. "Yeah, I'm lucky I'm a smart alec otherwise who knows what Max would have saddled me with!"

               They entered the motor home, both laughing, the kids all looked at them.

               "Okay kids, I'm your new mom and as such I get to name you." Will told them firmly, her expression clearly said that this was not up for debate.

               The X6's and X8's looked at each other and shrugged, having already decided that it was in their best interests to obey Will just as they had done at Manticore.

               Will grinned at them. "Okay then, girls first. Kia you are now Robyn R O B Y N, Kat you are Ryanne R Y A N N E ; Fixit you're Nikita N I K I T A and Ralph you're Cassidy C A S S I D Y." Will spelt out the names.

               The girls grinned liking their new names.

               "You're much better at this than Max." Alec commented grinning.

               Will winked at him then continued to name the kids. "Okay boys, Bullet you're Bret B R E T; Bugler you're Daniel, Danny for short D A N I E L, D A N N Y and Zero you're Cooper, Coop for short C O O P E R…."

               "C O O P." He interrupted her grinning.

               "Careful Coop or she'll ruffle your hair!" Jay quipped sticking out his tongue and dodging Will's right hand as she made to ruffle his hair.

               "Wow she does do that!" Ryanne piped up telling the adults that Jay had warned his new siblings about Will's habit of ruffling the hair of those she cared about.

               Alec started laughing at this whilst Will grinned and rolled her eyes.

                "Our surname is Wolfe, W O L F E." She finished informing her new children. "And remember to call me Mom and Alec Uncle Alec."

               "We will Mom." Nikita assured her smiling.

                "Okay our background story is…… Your dad died in a car crash, while I was pregnant with Robyn and Ryanne, oh and Cassidy and Cooper you are now twins since you're roughly the same age."

                "Sure no problem." Cooper replied grinning.

               "Yeah that's fine." Cassidy added.

               "Kids lets see you necks!" Alec ordered.

                "Necks?" Jay asked confused. "Oh yeah, the barcodes that's why you got that laser last night." He quickly recalled what they had told him.

               "Yep!" Will replied nodding as she made a fuss of the dogs.

               The X kids moved their hair or collars to allow Alec to see their barcodes.

               "They all need lasering, we'll do it after breakfast tomorrow." Alec decided.

               "Fine by me." Will replied.            

               "Okay now that that's settled lets get back to the movie!" Jay ordered and turned it back on before anyone could agree or disagree.

               "While you watch the film Alec and I'll sort out the sleeping arrangements." Will stated she made a move towards the master bedroom area pausing when Alec didn't follow her, she raised an eyebrow at him.

               "I want to watch the movie too!" Alec whined, pouted, and seated himself with an obstinate look on his face.

               "You know Alec you were wrong when you said eight kids." Will drolly stated.

               "Huh?" Alec gave her a confused look then getting her meaning glared at her.

               The kids all dissolved into laughter at this, which doubled when they received the full force of Alec's glare.

               "Watch the movie Alec, it'll be easier sorting out the beds by myself anyways." Will told him grinning, then moved into the master bed room. 

               22:47pm.

               At the sound of the end credits Will returned to the lounge area, she'd used all the available bedding to make up stacks to be lain out as extra mattresses, she had also written up a shopping list.  That only took her a few minutes so she then vegged out on the master bed with a book, she was joined by the two dogs. The four cats were asleep on the lower bunk in the other bedroom. 

               "Alec help me with the bedding while you kids get ready for bed, no arguments!" Will stated forestalling any comments, then turned and re-entered the master bedroom, returning with a stack of bedding.

               The others obeyed her commands, even Alec and soon the make shift mattresses were in the lounge and the kids had finished in the shower room. Everyone was now standing in the lounge area.

               "Okay, Jay and Danny you have the top bunk, Robyn and Ryanne you have the bottom one." Will stated moving to each of them in turn and kissing them on the head. "Good night sweet dreams, now off to bed." 

               The four youngsters obeyed too tired to do otherwise.

               "Nikita, Cassidy and myself will take the double bed tonight and swap with you guys tomorrow night, we'll alternate through out the trip." Will told them and went into the shower room.

               The X6's looked at each other, shrugged and went to their assigned beds.

                Alec walked over to the shower room so that he could talk to Will. "Will did you write a shopping list?" He asked her through the door.

               "Yep, air mattresses and more bedding, sleeping bags are on it." She responded.

               "Good, cos it's gonna get colder as we head to Canada." Alec needlessly informed her, then went and sat down to wait for her to exit the shower room.

               Will exited a few moments later grinned at the males. "Good night sweet dreams boys." She said refraining from kissing them to Bret and Coop's obvious relief, then went to bed.


	6. Chapter 6

11th to 23rd Nov 2003

Unwelcome Ties      By Western Blakehawke.

Set after LATR.  2021.

Ames meets the first human looking transgenic. Alec is reunited with a sibling and takes a road trip.

**Chapter 6**

               **Day Five.******

               The next day.

               6:10am.

               The kids had had their barcodes removed and everyone had sorted out their dirty laundry into two and a half bin liners to be washed later that day.

               Will had been busy making pancakes for all her kids; she included Alec in the kid category when it came to food, while they discussed what to add to the shopping list. Top of everyone's want list was more food.  That included cat and dog food.

               After they had all finished eating Will ran down the list, she had written it up only for appearances sake. The onlycategory not on the list was food, they would just collect the items they needed food wise from memory.

  
**  
**

**General**

**  
**

Sleeping bags 

Blankets

Air mattresses

Pillows

Sheets

Pillow cases

Bleach

Washing powder

Washing up liquid

Litter tray

Cat litter

Flea spray

Flea collars

Toilet paper

Baby wipes

Kitchen towel

First aid stuff

Batteries

Towels

**Grooming**

Toothbrushes

Hairbrushes

Combs

Flannels

Toiletries

Soap

Nail clippers

Razors

Shaving cream

Floss

Mouthwash

Female hygiene products

**Fun stuff **

DVDs

CD's

Personal CD player

Books / Activity books

Computer games

Soft toys

Board games

Chess set

Guitar

Art material

Blank disks

CD Roms

**Clothing**

Underwear

Socks

Shoes

Coats

General

Gloves

Hats

Scarves

               "Okay, I can't think of anything else, anyone?" Will asked looking at those around her.

               The others all shook their heads.

               "Hey you can look at Aunt Becky's stuff and see if you want any of it!" Jay suddenly piped up. "Ms. McNeill had all of it laundered." He added, before racing off to get the suitcases.

               "Good idea Jay." Will stated as she hurried after him.

                Cooper followed to help.  After a few moments they returned with Becky's three suitcases and four bags and began going through them, organizing the contents into types, they were sorting through one at a time. 

               Everyone but Alec was seated on the floor, Alec just sat drinking his coffee with a bemused expression on his face, the animals having been fed and walked before the people, were napping in the bunk bed room.

               "Hey a CD player!" Bret yelled grinning as he held it up. "Scratch that off the list Will."

               Will nodded grinning and continued to sort through the contents of the suitcase, handing the clothing to the girls so that they could choose items then try them on later.

               "There are CD's too, DVDs and books!" Jay informed them and pointed at the holdall that he knew contained those items.

               Cooper ignoring the one bag at a time policy, grabbed the holdall and quickly removed the contents. He carefully stacked them on the floor as he listed them. 

               "Hmmm, girly type CD's, lets look at the DVDs hmm The Sound of Music; Titanic; Shakespeare in love….  The only one that might be okay is Sound of music, it says a family fleeing the Germans in World War Two." He commented then moved on. "Books…. Romances! Ugh! Hmmm, self defence pointless, recipe book, here Will!" 

               He chucked the book at her she deftly caught it, and grinned at him.

               Will passed the book to Alec. "Here, guess who's learning to cook tonight!" She quipped.

               Alec reluctantly took the book. "Hey if you want food poisoning sure!" He countered grinning.

               "Oh don't worry I'll be supervising." Will replied smiling up at him.

               "The kids need lessons too Will." Alec reminded her hoping to distract her.

               "Alec, I'm gonna have years to teach the kids to cook." Will patiently reminded him.

               Alec opened his mouth to comment but was cut off.

               "You'll have a useful skill by the end of the trip, even if it only translates to one or two meals it's more than Max is capable of." She stated, hoping to engage his competitive spirit.

               Alec thought about this and grinned. "Yeah Max can't cook either, yep I'll take those lessons!"

               Will just grinned in response and grabbed the next suitcase, the first having been emptied of the items it contained, which was only warm weather clothes.

               "Cooking lessons sound good!" Danny commented smiling. "It gets kind of boring eating cold food all the time, I don't mind having lessons Mom!"

               The other kids all added their own agreements to this including Jay who added.

               "Yeah making cakes and cookies is really cool, especially getting to clean out the bowl and then eat the cake or cookies!"

               "Will how about you teach me cake making first?" Alec asked hopefully.

               "Alec, there's no time on the trip it'll be meals only, on your visits, I'll teach you how to bake cakes and cookies." Will promised the downcast transgenic. "Hey we can still buy 'em!" she reminded him.

               "Put cakes on you shopping list!" Alec ordered her.

               "Yes Sir!" Will replied saluting him.

               The kids laughed at the adults antics, then continued to finish unpacking all Becky's luggage, since Cooper had not been told off for opening another bag before the last was sorted, they had decided to open all the luggage at once and the lounge was now strewn with clothes and various other items.                          

               "Okay, lets get going then!" Alec said as he headed for the cab. "The next town is in Maryland, so we're making progress!" He grinned as he started up the motor home. "Hope they have a good supply of cakes!"

               Will laughed and rejoined the kids in sorting out Becky's belongings, she only raised an eyebrow over the fact that the contents of all the bags was now strewn around in no type of order, before she set to and started organizing the mess.

               After five minutes or so all of the items had been categorised.  

               Cassidy and Nikita were now in the master bedroom trying on the clothes they had picked out, Will had declined to choose any because after identifying Rebecca she felt uncomfortable at the idea of wearing her clothes, though she thought that Rebecca would not have minded, she let the X 6's have all of the items.

               The toiletries and first aid kit were placed in the shower room; CD's DVD's and books on the shelf in the lounge with Jay's and those that Will had bought along; the money that had been hidden in the bags, was placed with the majority of the funds for the trip, in the hidden safe in the master bedroom. The bags and suitcases were then placed inside each other to be returned to the master bedroom.

               Cassidy and Nikita returned grinning and flopped onto the floor since the seats were all taken.

               "Mom they fit us fine!" Cassidy stated smiling.

                "Yep! We packed 'em all away too!" Nikita added.

               "That's great!" Will responded grinning at them.

               Bret stood up and grabbed the suitcase full of bags and without a word returned them to their storage place he swiftly returned.

               "Hey you want to play a fun game?" Jay asked the other kids.

               "Yes!" Robyn and Ryanne yelled in unison bouncing on their seat.

               "Sure!" Cooper added equally interested but he refrained from bouncing.

                The others all added their willingness to play a game. Will stood up and left them to it, deciding to join Alec in the cab, they both grinned hearing Jay explain the spotting game to his new siblings.

               "He's ecstatic over finally having siblings and pets." Will commented smiling.

               "I bet Ames would love finding out that not only is his son happy to call a transgenic mom, but also loves having a transgenic uncle and seven transgenic siblings!" Alec chuckled as he imagined Ames ballistic reaction.

               "Alec remember no matter how much he goads you, no matter that you'd love to see the look on his face, you can not tell him!" Will sternly reminded her younger brother.

               "Relax Will, I'd never be that stupid! No way would I put you and the kids in danger like that!" Alec firmly reassured her.

               Will patted his arm. "I know you wouldn't, but still felt it needed saying."

               "Yeah I know why too, you fell in love with the kids on re meeting them didn't you, that's why you got all wolf on me when I moaned about taking them along." Alec correctly surmised.

               Will smiled and looked wistfully at her wedding band that she still wore as part of her pretence at being Jay and now the other kid's mom.

               "Hey what's with the look?" Alec asked in concern. "You'll meet someone else, he'll be your choice, not an assignment and I'm sure he won't uh freak about what you and the kids are and add another load of kids to your brood!" Alec firmly reassured her believing whole heartedly in what he was saying.

               "Only if he's a single father." Will quietly stated.

               "What?" Alec asked as he glanced at her confused.

               "I can't have kids Alec, Sandemann saw to that." She quietly told him. "I must have been the youngest person ever to be sterilised."

               Alec looked at her in shock, the thought of an X being sterilised had never occurred to him, since he knew that none of the X-5's or 6's were. He had assumed that Will had chosen not to have kids with John because their marriage was an assignment, even if she did love him.

               "Alec watch the road!" Will yelped as she lunged at the steering wheel and put them back in the correct lane. 

               Alec did as instructed, still silent from the shock of her revelation, he kept glancing at her but only for a few seconds at a time as with a supreme effort of will he maintained his concentration on driving.

               "I'm fine bro, I dealt with my anger and resentment years ago." She reassured him. "Hey it's not all bad, I never had to suffer the indignity of heat; I don't menstruate and I'll never go through the agony of labour!" She half joked grinning.

               Alec could see and hear that she was being utterly truthful with him so he relaxed and returned her grin.  "Well that solves the mystery of why Renfro didn't have you in the breeding scheme." He told her. "We were all kind of wondering how you got out of it, but no one wanted to volunteer to ask!" He only half joked, since no one had wanted the task, since she had not mentioned why in her debriefing files.

               Will burst out laughing at this, she had accurately pinned the querying looks she got from some of her kin after the first couple, when they never followed through with a question.  "Yeah, that was something that Sandemann allowed to be known." She replied when her laughter subsided.

               8:18am.

               Maryland

               They rolled into the town that they had pegged as being large enough to supply their needs.

               Alec remained with the motor home to mind it and the dogs and cats. Will had decided to take the kids to a shoe shop first, since the transgenic kids shoes did not really fit them, being too large and were a little the worse for wear. 

               8:51am

               Will and the kids emerged from the shoe shop, each of the children were now shod in good strong walking boots, Will had decided to get Jay some to, so that each child had two pairs of shoes. Their old shoes were in the bag that each carried. The woman in the shop had been most helpful and had directed them to a large discount store that sold everything but food.

               10:24am.

               They finally emerged from the discount warehouse, fully laden with goods.

               "We'll take these back to the motor home and then finish the shopping." Will told the kids and they set off.

               10:39am

               Alec had spotted them coming and opened the motor home door, they all trudged in and haphazardly dumped their bags in the lounge.

               "Hey Will, we'll be passing other towns all the way to Montreal and I'm sure Canada has shops!" Alec quipped sarcastically as he eyed all the newly acquired stuff. "How much did all this stuff cost?"

               "Relax Alec I used the credit card." Will assured him. "That's why I got everything I saw that we might need here, instead of waiting until we got to Canada."

               "We found a great discount warehouse!" Cooper told him. "Seemed dumb not to take advantage of it, by buying what we'd need later in Canada."

               "Alec it also keeps our cover of a family moving for a better life, if we don't buy essentials like more crockery and bedding in the area where we plan to settle." Will patiently reminded him.

               "Yeah point." Alec responded nodding. "So did you get any food?"

               "Not yet!" Will replied laughing. "We thought we'd drop this stuff off first then hit the supermarket."

               "Mom can we stay here and show Uncle Alec what we bought?" Jay asked, speaking for all the younger kids whom he had quickly assumed leadership of.

               Will shrugged her right shoulder. "Sure. Okay Cass; Nik; Bret; Coop lets go get some food."

               "Some? Lots Will lots!" Alec yelped.

               "Alec there are other towns with shops." Will replied paraphrasing what he had said to her. "We'll get what we can, and have room for and use the credit card, we will stock up on tinned goods etcetera, other stuff." She shrugged her right shoulder. "We'll get what we can." 

               She and the X6's left the motor home before Alec could reply.

               Alec turned to the youngsters. "Okay so what'd you buy?" 

               The youngsters began to excitedly dump the contents of bags onto the floor and table, basically anywhere where there was space.

               12:21pm.

                Will and the X'6s finally returned from shopping and dumped their new purchases in the kitchen and lounge. Cooper carefully laid down the bagged guitar that he had slung over his shoulder.  They began to quickly unpack and put away the perishable items.

               "You were gone a long time." Alec commented as he and the youngsters began to nose in the grocery bags. "We were about to form a search party." He quipped grinning.

               Will tapped him on the hand lightly. "Quit nosing in the bags, if you want to see what we brought help unpack 'em and hand the stuff to us so we can put it away." Will ordered.

               Alec pouted but complied, the youngsters bored wandered off and started playing catch with the dogs.

               Will rolled her eyes. "Outside guys!" She ordered them. "Alec you supervise!"

               "Geeez Will make up your mind would you!" Alec told her sarcastically, but followed the youngsters outside.

               "Go on, I'll finish putting the stuff away then start lunch." Will told the X6's tilting her head towards the door.

               "Thanks Mom!" Cassidy said as she swiftly joined the others outside.

               "Thanks!" Bret echoed and raced after her followed by a grinning Nikita, who had nodded her own thanks to Will.

               Will looked at Cooper. "Aren't you gonna join them?"

               Copper had moved over to the guitar that Will had purchased for him, the reason for the lengthy shopping trip.  "I'll stay inside and tune my guitar, if that's okay?." He asked her sounding unsure of himself for once.

               Will grinned at him. "No problem suga." 

               Will had noticed a launderette nearby so she quickly collected the two and a half bin liners full of laundry that they had sorted out before breakfast and after she finished preparing lunch and put it on to cook, she headed over to it.

               13:10pm

               Will opened the motor home's door and yelled. "Lunch is almost ready, come and wash up!"

               Everyone traipsed inside immediately, they were all starving, the dogs happily flopped onto the large cushion bed that had be purchased for them, thoroughly exhausted by their game of catch.

               Ten minutes or so later.

               Everyone was tucking into the stew, Will having decided to cook the main meal for lunch and only leave Alec the task of creating a light meal for tea, since he was an amateur in the kitchen and she didn't want howls of complaints from the kids over their being hungry.

               Six of the kids were squeezed around the table, Cooper and Nikita were seated on the floor with trays on their laps and Will and Alec stood at the counter eating. The dogs and cats had been shut in the bunk bed room, to stop them from trying to snag food.

               "Ah Will I can understand most of your purchases but an inflatable raft?" Alec queried as he helped himself to more stew.

               "The kids all wanted it and since I wouldn't mind owning a property with a lake….." Will trailed off shrugging her right shoulder.

               "I suppose the answers similar for the other odd purchases." Alec said rhetorically rolling his eyes.

               "Yep!" Jay answered him anyways. "We got some really cool stuff!" He grinned.

               "Will try not to turn them into spoilt brats!" Alec sarcastically ordered her.

               Will laughed at this. "C'mon Alec we plan on being stuck in the middle of nowhere, I needed to buy stuff to keep them amused, also I hate spoilt brats so I most definitely will not let my kids turn in them!"

               "You're the only brat in our family!" Cassidy sweetly informed Alec.

               The other kids burst out laughing at that comment and Alec's expression.

               "Damn she's taking after you already!" Alec sarcastically told Will then grinned at Cassidy. "Good come back Cass!"

               "Thank you!" Cassidy replied and returned his grin.

               13:53pm.

               The stew had been finished and everyone was just lounging around.

               Alec looked at the clock. "Okay time to head out!" He stated and made to start the motor home.

               "I want to drive!" Bret told him as he also stood up.

               "Look kid if I need a break I'll let you know!" Alec told him firmly and sat in the drivers seat.

               "You've been driving the last few days!" Bret pointed out, in a slightly whiney tone.

               "He's right Alec, quit being territorial and give someone else a go!" Will called from the back.

               "But….!" Alec whined pouting.

               "Alec let Bret drive." Will firmly ordered. "Not driving won't kill you!"

               "It might!" Alec sarcastically responded looking at Bret.

               Bret glared at him. "Hey I can drive, I excel at driving!"

               "He does Alec." Will confirmed.

               "And you know this how, 'cause you adopted him so he must be brilliant?" Alec replied sarcastically, still not budging from the drivers seat.  

               "No Alec, I know his skills 'cause I taught him." Will casually informed him.

               "Oh." Alec replied his planned sarcastic comeback dropped at Will's unexpected answer. With a last longing look around the cab, Alec moved out of the drivers seat and back into the body of the vehicle.

               Bret swiftly took the vacated seat and started up the motor home before Alec could change his mind.

               "Cheer up Uncle Alec you can play monopoly with us." Jay informed the pouting transgenic. "You can be banker." He stated as he finished setting up the board.

               Alec grinned at him and rubbed his hands in glee. "Okay I want the sports car." He stated as he seated himself.

               "It looks a little like your car." Danny observed. "Have you still got it?"

               "Yep it's safely garaged in Seattle." Alec replied as he swiftly sorted out every ones money.

               Playing with Jay, Danny and Alec were Cassidy, Robyn and Ryanne.

              Nikita was working on fixing a broken CD player that she had found a week or so earlier, since Will had indulged her by letting her buy whatever wires etcetera that she wanted, and the equipment to fix stuff, as long as they were not too expensive. She had commandeered the master bedroom and was in there happily working away.

               Cooper was seated on the floor, acoustic guitar in his hands and a pad of paper next to him, he was contentedly composing. 

               The dogs were lounging on their bed nearby and the cats as usual were asleep in the bunk room.

               Will had been sorting out the laundry and placing it in the correct drawers or wardrobe space assigned to each member of her family. Finishing that she grabbed a book and joined Bret in the cab, where she settled back and started reading.

              Bret stopped at a gas station on the way of the town, Will hopped out and added gas and alcohol to the tanks, paid and hopped back in. 

****

               17:04pm.

               The satellite phone rang. 

              Cooper answered it since he was closest. "Hello." Listens. "Mom sure I'll get her…MOM PHONE!" He yelled. "It's some guy!"

               Will swiftly moved and took the phone from him.   "Hello." Listens. "Hi Max." Paused. "Your at Logan's, phones on speaker, I'll put this one on speaker too, okay who's with you besides Logan?"

                Nikita having heard Cooper's yell had come into the lounge and sat on the floor.

               "O.C and Joshua…. Who's the kid his voice is way too deep to be Ray?" Max responded.

               "Hi Max! That's Cooper and I'm Jay now, short for James!" Jay informed those in Seattle.

               "Max remember the four X6's and the X8 we kept from getting caught, the ones who helped spring you from A… the governments clutches, well we found them in Virginia last night with two other X8's!" Alec informed those in Seattle before Will got the chance.

               "They were supposed to be safely in Canada." Logan stated a little peeved after all his trouble to get the necessary papers.

               "That's exactly what I said!" Alec informed him.

               "We did go to Canada, before we crossed the boarder we found the twins, so we took 'em with us, we lived in Canada for ages, then accidentally got bought back over the boarder and ended up in Virginia, where Will caught Ralph's scent as they were driving by and they stopped the motor home and Will came and got us and said she's adopting us no arguments and here we are!" Cooper informed them then paused for breath.

               "Yeah, she's now got eight kids, two large dogs and four cats!" Alec added. "The kids had pets!"

               "She renamed 'em too!" Jay piped up.  "Tell them your new names!" He ordered his siblings.

               "Nikita, formerly Fixit." 

               "Daniel, Danny formerly Bugler."

               "Robyn formerly Kia."

               "Ryanne formerly Kat."

               "Cassidy formerly Ralph."

               "Bret formerly Bullet." He called from the cab.

               "Cooper formerly Zero." 

               "Max, Will's a hell of a lot better at naming people than you are!" Alec taunted her. "Ow!"

               Will lowered her hand from lightly hitting Alec on the head.  "She'd do the same for me." She sweetly informed him.

               The kids started laughing at this.

               "So guys how are things in Seattle?" Will asked ignoring Alec's hurt look.

               "Normal is still a pain! He is such a grouch 'cause your away Alec, so you better get your buns back here soon otherwise, I'm gonna be on trial for killing that tight assed jerk!" Original Cindy informed them.  "Will congratulations on becoming a mom to eight! Four girls and four boys that's a nice balance." She added genuinely pleased for the transgenic.

               "Thanks O.C. I think so too." Will grinned in response.

               "Hey Max is it true that most X's burn water?" Jay suddenly chimed in.

               "Uh yeah way?" Max asked puzzled.

               "'Cause I wanted Uncle Alec to make me pancakes for breakfast and Mom said better have cereal or toast if I didn't want food poisoning and Uncle Alec agreed and said that every X series that he knows apart from Mom burns water." Jay informed her. "Aunt Becky had a cook book and Mom said she's gonna teach Uncle Alec how to make a meal from it tonight!"

               "I hope you gonna be supervising him suga, cause believe me leave an X alone in the kitchen even with instructions and they still manage to make something inedible!" O.C sarcastically stated.

               "Mom already promised to watch him like a hawk!" Nikita told her.

               "Yeah and we had our main meal for lunch, so there wouldn't be so much pressure on Uncle Alec regarding our tea." Cooper added grinning.

               "Uncle Alec." Max stated in an amused tone of voice. "Wow I find it so hard to see you being responsible enough to be left in charge of kids."

               "Actually he's very good at keeping them amused." Will stuck up for him. "I actually feel fine leaving them with him."

               "Hey being an uncle's fine 'cause you can hand the kids back!" Alec replied grinning. "Will's the one who has to discipline 'em! Though she's actually got that down pat, she just reverts to Manticore, I only met Lydecker a couple of times but she does a mean impression of him!"

               "Well who else would I base my parenting skills on?" Will sarcastically pointed out. "'Sides giving orders in a don't argue with me tone seems to work!"

               "But you're not mean like those at Manticore?" Joshua asked confused.

               "Of course not Josh!" Will replied. "I think I'm pretty laid back, but on some issues I don't want a debate, like bed times!"

               "Yeah Josh, she only did the I outrank you bit on bedtime and adopting the kids." Alec confirmed.

               "That's good, Joshua would hate to think tiny fella is turning into Manticore person." He stated sounding relieved.

               "Nah never happen!" Will firmly replied.

               "Well we only called in to check up on you but since everything is obviously fine…." Logan said.

                "We're in Maryland, so we're making good time." Will informed those in Seattle.

                "That's great, I'll start trying to locate bigger houses for you." Logan promised

                "Thanks Logan." Will replied.

               "Will I know that you're still using Wilhelmina Blake Merlyn Wolfe born 4th July 1992, but what about the kids what are their full names and birthdates so I can make up ID's for each of them and send them to you." Logan told her.

                "Well as Jay said he's James….. Jay I'm going to give you a new birthday okay?" Will asked.

               "Yeah Aunt Becky did too." Jay replied nodding not caring when his birthday was as long as he still got presents."

               "Okay then James Matthew Robert born 9th of August 2014." Will stated making a mental note of what she told Logan.

               "Cool that makes me older than I would be using my real birthday!" Jay yelled ecstatic at suddenly being a few months older.

               Will grinned at him. "Bret Nathaniel Tobias born 2nd  January 2004; Nikita Amber Kara born 21st April 2005; Cassidy Sophia Tabitha and Cooper Sean Thomas born 3rd May 2006." Will stated.

               Alec burst out laughing. "Tabby and Tom are names you give cats Will!"

               "Thomas means twin and Tabitha is the only girls name I like that'll go nicely with Thomas." Will stated rolling her eyes at him.

               "Oh right." Alec replied and quit laughing but retained his usual cocky grin.

               "Right and the others?" Logan asked, getting Will back on subject before she and Alec started their usual annoying banter.

               "Logan you'll need to put a different birth mother on their birth certificates, I'll pretend that I was my husband's second wife, he was a widower with only his four kids as family." Will advised. "Otherwise it'll look like I would have been eleven when Bret was born. The four eldest are my adopted step children, can you make up adoption papers too?"

               "Of course Will that's not a problem." Logan replied his grin was evident in his voice. 

               "Right……. Daniel Caleb Vaughn born 2nd September 2013; Robyn Jennifer Louisa and Ryanne Jessica Laura born 10th December 2015." Will finished giving the names and birth dates. 

                "Okay I've got all that, I'll make up what you need ASAP, we need to be going. Bye everyone safe trip." Logan stated.

               "Bye Will, Alec, kids!" O.C. cheerfully stated.

               "Bye tiny fella, bye Alec, bye bye kids!" Joshua echoed.

               "Bye guys!" Max called just before Logan cut off the call.

               "We didn't get to say goodbye!" Jay moaned.

               "I wanted to say bye!" Ryanne whined and Robyn nodded her head.

               "Never mind, I'm sure they'll call again, I know they'll call again." Will told them just as they crossed the state line.

               Pennsylvania.

               "Hey if anyone's interested we just crossed into Pennslyvania!" Bret called from the cab.

               "Cool! Vampires!" Jay yelled bouncing up and down. 

               "That's Transylvania in Romania on the other side of the Atlantic!" Will responded laughing.

               "Yeah buddy and vamps are fictional, myths …..they don't exist!" Alec added also laughing

               "How do you know?" Jay asked. "Most people would think that you guys or Familiars were myths too." He accurately pointed out.

               "Well if they do exist Buffy here and I will stake 'em!" Alec replied.

               "Buffy? You're calling me a teenager?" Will asked Alec not sure whether to be flattered or insulted.

               "Calling you Buffy is a good thing." Alec hastily told her.

               "C'mon lets finish our game!" Jay ordered bored with the adults nonsensical prattling.

               "Yeah, Uncle Alec needs to be free to cook our tea." Cooper drolly stated as he picked up his guitar.

               Alec groaned at the thought of his imminent cooking lesson, then turned his attention back to the game, trying to block the notion of cooking from his mind.

               Everyone went back to whatever they were doing before the phone call.

               18:39pm.

               The kids had decided to watch The Sound of Music, all except Cassidy who was driving, though she was avidly listening to it. 

               Will had had to physically restrain Alec to stop him from taking over after Bret announced that he wanted to quit.

               Will and Alec were in the kitchen, Alec was pouting and glaring at her.

               "C'mon Alec cooking will get you points with females." Will quietly pointed out, so that only he would hear.

               "It will?" Alec asked pout and glare miraculously disappearing. "Why didn't you tell me that weeks ago." He rhetorically asked.

               Will just shrugged and went back to flipping through the cook book looking for a suitable recipe.  "Baked bean chilli, yep we have all the ingredients, except for the beef mince, but we have veggie mince, so we'll use that instead, says feeds six, so we double the ingredients and there'll be enough for all of us." Will told him.

               She then handed him the book, and started gathering ingredients and utensils etc.  "Okay that's everything you need now you just follow the recipe. I'll make up the rice to go with it." She told him after placing everything onto the counter.

               Alec looked up from rereading the recipe. "But Will…" He whined.

               "Females." Will blunty stated. "Alec measure everything out two times and chop them up separately, make sure your ingredients for each batch stay separate." She advised.

               Alec nodded without another word and started following the instructions, muttering them to himself as he did so.  "680 grams of mince okay doubled that's 1360 grams which is three pounds." He weighed out the mince then went to the next preparation on the list. "Two tablespoons of olive oil, okay four, I'll do that at the appropriate time, one okay two large onions finely chopped."  Alec picked up one of the onions and was about to start chopping it with it's skin on.

               "Alec peel them first." Will told him patiently keeping her expression neutral.

               "What, well why doesn't the stupid book say that!" He asked her aggrieved.

               "'Cause it's common sense." Will patiently replied.

               Alec pouted at her and returned to his task, he swiftly peeled then chopped up the onions.  "340 grams of button mushrooms roughly chopped, okay double will be 780 grams." Alec swiftly weighed out the correct amount and then roughly chopped them up. "Three 215 gram cans of baked beans need six, check, okay can opener." Alec spotted it and quickly opened the cans.

                "Two 400 gram cans of chopped tomatoes need four, got 'em." He swiftly opened those cans too. "290 gram can of kidney beans need two." Opened them. "One teaspoon of paprika so need two and one of cayenne pepper two again, okay will add them when needed too. Um salt and freshly ground black pepper how much…. Will?"

               "Just put them on the table, so everyone can season the meal to their own taste, I'll make sure no one goes overboard before trying it first." Will casually replied. "Alec remember to stir the mince."

               "Okay." Alec returned his attention to the next stage of the meal.  "Um brown the mince in a large non-stick frying pan." He looked at the stove and saw that Will had placed two frying pans for him to use, he poured the mince into them and browned it stirring it with the wooden spoon that Will had placed on the counter.

               "Remove the mince from the pan, draining any fat." Alec did so then. "Will what should I do with the mince 'til I need it?"

               Will silently handed him two large mixing bowls.

                "Thanks." He said and grinned, placing the mince in them.  "Then add the oil." He carefully measured out the oil and added it to each pan. "Add the onion and gently fry until softened but not browned. Add the mushrooms and cook until soft."

               "Here." Will said handing him another wooden spoon.  "Prod 'em every so often."

               "Thanks." Alec grinned at her and did as she advised until they were soft. "Add the mince, baked beans, tomatoes and kidney beans." Alec swiftly did so. "Stir in the paprika and cayenne pepper and simmer for 45 minutes." Alec quickly measured out the spices and added them and then let it simmer.

               Thirty minutes later.

               "Cassidy find somewhere that you can pull over, you have fifthteen minutes 'til teas ready!" Will called.

               "Okay according to the GPS, there's a campsite about twelve minutes away." Cassidy replied.

               "Sounds good, make for it and we'll stay there for the night." Will responded.

               "Will do!" Cassidy replied and returned her full attention to driving.

               Eleven minutes later.

               Cassidy brought the motor home to a stop at the campsite. The kids all washed their hands, set the table and poured drinks for everyone.

               19:58pm

               "Okay it's cooked." Alec told Will. "Is the rice done?"

               "Yep." Will replied. "Hand me the plates, so I can start dolling it out."

              Alec complied and all the kids watched as Will dolled out the food, Alec brought it over to the table and after everyone was served the eight children looked at their plates then at the two adults. 

               Will sprinkled some salt and pepper on her food and everyone followed suit, all were waiting for her to try the chilli before they would touch it, even Alec. 

               Will guessed this and took a forkful of chilli added some rice, then ate it. "It's good Alec, see you can cook!" Will told him grinning.

               At her compliment they all tucked in.

               20:17pm.

               They had just finished their meal.

               "Okay, Jay, Danny and Nikita you have clean up duty, Cooper you get to walk the dogs, Robyn and Ryanne you feed them and the cats when they get back." Will gave out the list of assignments. 

               The kids started to do their tasks. Cooper collected the dogs from the bunk room.

                "Uncle Alec the chilli wasn't half bad." Cooper told him grinning as he leashed the dogs, he then quickly exited the motor home.

               "Yep! It was good!" Jay yelled bouncing around the kitchen.

               "I liked it too!" Robyn and Ryanne said in unison.

                "Me too!" Danny added.

               "Yeah, it was good!" Cassidy stated grinning.

               "I wished you'd made more." Nikita added.

               "Yeah it was great, so what are you gonna make tomorrow?" Bret asked grinning.

               "Tomorrow?" Alec said in shock he looked at Will.

               "Might as well give you a few more lessons." Will stated shrugging. "It's a good idea to have more than one meal that you can cook, otherwise people might get bored." She obliquely added.

               Alec got her reference and nodded. "Okay while I'm here you can teach me." He grinned.

               20:42pm.

               The kids had finished their chores and were starting to aggravate each other.

               "I'm gonna drive!" Alec said standing up and he hurried to the cab. "Our cover won't be damaged by one night of travelling." He informed Will over his shoulder.

               "That's fine Alec." Will told him.

               "What you're not gonna argue?" Alec asked shocked.

               "Nope, the sooner we get to Canada, the sooner we can find a large property and everyone won't be in each others space all the time." Will replied rolling her eyes.

               Alec nodded and was soon starting up the motor home.

               Will glanced at her watch. "Okay everyone settle down!" She all but yelled.

               The kids ignored her and continued the arguments or playing.

               "AAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEE!" Will let out an ear piercing howl and everyone covered their ears and glared at her.

               "Thank you for your attention." Will drolly stated.  "Okay kids I'm gonna tell you a story, then it's bedtime." She told them.

               "A story?" Bret said in surprise. "No ones ever told us bedtime stories before."

               "I know honey." Will gently replied and sat down.

               "Mom's good at stories!" Jay informed them. "Can it be about Boba Fett?"

               "That was the plan." Will replied grinning.

               "Goody!" Jay yelled bouncing about.

               "Jay, everyone, when you're sitting comfortably I'll begin." Will drolly informed them.

               Jay quit bouncing immediately and he and the others made themselves comfortable on the seats and air mattresses that they had pumped up earlier.

               22:07pm.

               Will had finished the story and all the kids were now in bed, Cassidy and Nikita were bedded down in the lounge. Will had joined Alec in the cab, were she napped, whilst he drove.

               In the early hours of the morning the motor home passed over the state boundary into New York.

               Alec found a campsite and pulled in for the morning, so that they could all get out and stretch their legs etcetera. He then settled down for a nap until the kids woke up.


	7. Chapter 7

11th to 23rd Nov 2003

Unwelcome Ties      By Western Blakehawke.

Set after LATR.  2021.

Ames meets the first human looking transgenic. Alec is reunited with a sibling and takes a road trip.

****

**Chapter 7**

               **Day Six.******

               6:01am.

               "I'm hungry!" Ryanne cried as she entered the lounge.

               She was followed by Robyn, Danny and Jay who all echoed her cry.

               Their cries woke up the others and resulted in pillows being thrown at them by Cassidy and Nikita; the four youngsters easily dodged them and moved into kitchen.

               "Hey, you needn't have woken the rest of us!" Cooper grouched as he and Bret came in behind them. "You're all capable of getting your own breakfast!"

               "Want Mom or Uncle Alec to make mine." Jay responded pouting.

               "Yeah!" The others echoed.

               "Mom! Come feed the brats so we can go back to sleep!" Cassidy yelled glaring at the youngsters.

               "Geeez they're behaving like proper kids already!" Alec groused sarcastically as he and Will emerged from the cab.  "Make 'em stop! Turn 'em back into nice obedient quiet soldiers!" He whined to Will.

               Will rolled her eyes and looked at the kids, face impassive.  "Toast and cereal are all that's on offer today, I'll make pancakes tomorrow." 

               "But I wanted pancakes today!" Jay whined pouting.

               Will just shrugged her right shoulder. "Tough!"

               "I'm telling Dad!" Jay threatened glaring at her while he pouted.

               "There's the phone go ahead." Will replied pointing to it.

               "Will are you mad!" Alec cried as he grabbed the phone before Jay could. "His dad is Ames White!"

               "I'm well aware of that fact Alec." Will sarcastically told him. "Maybe I want to be put out of my misery and after all if I'm dead whose gonna make Jay pancakes, his school teachers, the school cooks, oh I forgot they only serve toast or cereal."

               "Damn! I hate arguing with you you're just like Dad!" Jay huffed and pouted again. "You win!"

               Will grinned at him and ruffled his hair. "I always tend to." She told him.

               Jay endured the hair ruffling and grinned at her. "Daddy does too." 

               Alec was about to make a snide comment regarding Ames, but quickly thought better of it.

               "Yeah, I noticed the similarity in arguing when we met through his work." Will blandly stated and started getting out the cereal boxes.

               Alec looked at her, not believing that she could be so calm when discussing the fact that Ames had captured her.  "Dack! Trixy!" He called as he grabbed their leashes from the hook and then swiftly placed them on the dogs when they came to him. "I'll walk the dogs." He said as he and the dogs exited the motor home.

               Cassidy and Nikita had got up and were making themselves some toast and cereal, Bret and Cooper had both opted for cereal as had Robyn.

               "You've met my Dad?" Jay asked then remembered their previous conversation. "Yeah of course you know him otherwise you couldn't have given an opinion."

               "Yes to both." Will replied as she took over the toaster after Nik had finished with it. "Okay Jay, Ryanne and Danny you want toast?"

               All three said yes.

               "Okay since it's a six slice toaster you get two pieces each this round." Will informed them as she put in the bread.   

               Twenty seven minutes later.

               Alec and the dogs returned, everyone else had eaten their full and were now clearing up or waiting to use the shower room and get dressed or feeding the animals.

               "Alec do you want toast?" Will asked.

               "Yeah please." Alec replied as he released the dogs and flopped onto a seat.   

               Will quickly served him then since the shower room was now free, she went to change into clean clothes etc, since both she and Alec had slept in theirs.

               "Kids there's a play area, I'll supervise you for an hour after I've eaten , then we'll be on our way." Alec told the youngsters.

               "Uncle Alec you don't need to supervise us." Nikita told him. "Us older ones will watch the youngsters."

               Alec thought for a moment and nodded.  "Okay, just stay in the play area and no using you skills, even if the place looks deserted it might not be." He warned.

               "We're not dumb!" Cooper informed him with a glare.

               "Hey I know! But as you're uncle, I need to point out the obvious!" Alec replied grinning. "Now scat!"

               The kids did as commanded and made for the play area with the dogs. Alec finished his breakfast and while Will went outside and played with the kids and dogs, he showered and changed, then grabbed the drivers seat and sat there listening to the radio.

               07:12am.

               Everyone was back aboard the motor home and they were soon off again.

               "Mom can you play the guitar?" Ryanne asked hopefully.

               "Yes honey why?" Will replied.

               "We want you to sing to us like Maria in The Sound of Music." Robyn informed her.

               "Yeah sing!" Cooper ordered handing her his guitar.

               "I said I could play the guitar not that I could sing." Will drolly pointed out as she took the guitar.

               "Oh c'mon Will sing for 'em you actually don't sound half bad!" Alec called then burst out laughing.

               "What's funny Uncle Alec?" Jay asked and the other kids and Will echoed the query.

               "I was just thinking that if Will's Maria, and you kids are the Von Trapp children, guess who that makes Captain Von Trapp!" Alec said through his laughter. "Hey Will maybe you should marry Amsey, get him of our backs!" He continued to laugh as he drove.

               "Very funny Alec." Will told him totally un amused by the notion.

               Jay started bouncing up and down. "Yeah if you married Dad it'd be so cool!" He yelled. "Then I'd have a Mom, a Dad and seven brothers and sisters!"

               "Yes we'd like a dad and Jay's dad sounds fun, he told us of all the cool stuff they did together." Danny told the two shocked adults.

               "Yeah, he does sound great!" Bret added. "And if he was our dad he wouldn't be trying to kill us." 

               The others all verbalised their total agreed with Jay, Danny and Bret.

               "Hang on a minute guys!" Alec called shocked that the kids were taking his jest seriously even the X6's who knew exactly were transgenics stood with Ames White. "I was joking!"

               "There's many a truth spoken in jest!" Nikita quoted. "Why don't you and Ames try it Mom?"

               "Because I'm not suicidal and neither is he!" Will replied trying desperately to hang onto her calm and collected attitude. 

               "Besides he'd never agree!" Alec added.

               "I'll call him and ask!" Jay responded and dived for the phone.

               "NO!" Will and Alec yelled as Will grabbed the phone first and held it to her chest. 

               "Jay you are not going to call you father and suggest we get married, that combined with the shock of your calling me mom and seven transgenics siblings, plus that you call Alec uncle would probably kill him!" Will told the pouting boy.

               "Let him…." Alec didn't finish the sentence realising that it would upset Jay and from the odd way they reacted to his jest, the other kids as well.

               "But you and Dad have so much in common!" Jay wheedled. "You both love me, you both like giving orders, you like ……"

               "Enough! The subject is closed!" Will said and moved into the cab still holding the phone, she pulled the sliding door shut and then sat and glared at Alec.  "Thank you so much for putting the idea into their heads." She sarcastically said in a fake sweet voice. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't snap your neck!"

               "Because then you'd be alone with them plotting to marry you off to Ames." Alec replied looking nervously at her.

               Will just growled at him.

               "Look I'm sorry! How was I to now that all of 'em would take the jest seriously and approve!" Alec pretty much whined at her. "I didn't know Jay had been talking about the stuff he did with Ames to them, did you?"

               Will sighed.  "No, I didn't want them to dislike Jay just because of who his father is, but agreeing with him about me and Ames marrying!" Will stopped to shocked to carry on speaking.

               Neither transgenic adult spoke for the next eighty four minutes.

               In the back the kids had moved into the master bedroom and were discussing strategy for getting Will and Ames married. The first thing they had decided was that as far as the adults were concerned they had decided to drop the subject. They agreed to continue to plot in secret. That decided they each started doing different things so as not to arouse suspicion.

               Nikita had finished repairing the CD player and she remained in the master bedroom listening to a Shania Twain CD and reading one of Will's fantasy books.

               Cooper was teaching Danny and Jay to play chess in the lounge, they were seated on the floor.

               Robyn; Ryanne; Bret and Cassidy were playing Clue on the lounge table.

               9:41 am.

               "Will you want to go check on the kids?" Alec asked her.

               "No." Will replied and refused to budge from the relative safety of the cab.

               "Will you're going to have to face 'em sometime." Alec pointed out with a slight sarcastic edge.

               "Don't wanna and you can't make me!" Will snapped at him. "You and your dumb jokes!" She added glaring at him.

               "Look I'm sorry about that! Who would've thought that the X kids would decide they liked the sound of Ames as a father!" Alec beseechingly replied. "God I know we had a weird upbringing, but that never crossed my mind!"

               Will undid her seat belt and stood up squaring her shoulders, then she pulled back the door and went through into the body of the motor home.

               The kids looked up as she entered, Jay came forward and hugged her. "Don't worry Mom I won't call Dad or mention you marrying him again if it makes you unhappy." Jay told her.

               "Yeah Mom, none of us want to upset you." Cassidy said as she joined the hug.

               All the other kids including Nikita, Bret had fetched her, joined in the hug and added their reassurances.

               Will being so relieved to hear them say exactly what she wanted them to say, paid no attention to her instincts which screamed con, as they broke the group hug.

               "Good because Ames and me would never work, we'd end up killing each other, not that Ames would ever agree to try marriage to begin with." Will told them grinning.

               "But if Dad did agree?" Jay pounced. "Would you?"

               Will looked at all her kids rolled her eyes. "Yes."

               "Okay." Jay said and went back to the chess board. "Coop's teaching me and Danny to play." He explained.

               All the kids returned to their pastimes.

               "That's good." Will stated still a little shell shocked, she took one of her books off the shelf and went into the bunk room to read, she took the top bunk since the cats were curled up on the bottom one.

                11:50 am.

                Will got up and started making sandwiches for lunch, the kids were still preoccupied with doing their own thing.

               12:01pm.

                "Lunch is ready." Will told them as she went to inform Nikita, she then took Alec his, since he didn't want to quit driving.

               After their meal.

               "Okay we need to make up a want list for our house." Will told the kids as she sat on a mattress and pulled out a notebook.

               "A bedroom each!" Jay was the first to speak.

               "Definitely!" Cooper agreed and this was seconding by all but the twins.

               "We want to share." They firmly informed Will.

              Will grinned at them. "Okay."

               "Hey don't forget you were gonna get a place large enough so I'd have my own room when I come visit!" Alec reminded her from the cab.

               "Relax Alec I hadn't forgotten." Will drolly replied. 

               "Good!" Alec responded.

               "Swimming pool." Jay stated.

               "Tennis court." Cassidy added.

               "Movie stars!" Alec yelled.

               Will burst out laughing. "Guys we're not moving to L.A, we're moving to the middle of nowhere, well as near as we can get anyway."

               "Uncle Alec why'd you say movie stars?" Danny queried looking baffled.

               "He referenced a very old television show." Will told him and the others since they all looked equally puzzled.

               "They showed a marathon run a couple of weeks ago." Alec informed them. "It was a funny series about a hillbilly who found oil on his land and became an instant billionaire, he moved his family to Beverly Hills and bought a mansion." Alec sounded very wistful.

               "Alec, it's kind of the reverse for us." Will pointed out. "We're sort of becoming hillbillies because I plan to be as self sufficient as possible."

               "Well ma Wolfe you sure got the right number of kids to be a hillbilly." Alec quipped. 

               "Self sufficient, does that  mean we get to keep chickens and goats and things." Bret asked his eyes aglow at the thought.

               "I plan on getting chickens and ducks, yes goats are a definite maybe because we'll need milk, we need to find out how much they or a few cows cost to keep." Will replied.

               "Could we have both cows and goats if they don't cost much?" Jay asked loving the idea.

               "Yep!" Will confirmed grinning at them. 

               "What about horses?" Cooper asked. "I've always wanted a horse."

               "Me too Coop so if we can afford 'em we'll get some." Will told him smiling.

               "Great I've wanted to learn to ride since I saw a couple of westerns!" Cooper replied grinning.

                "Okay I've got two lists then; house wants and animal wants." Will stated. "I'll tell you what I've put so far, tell me if I missed anything, oh some of these I added without mentioning 'em to you."

**House **

9 bedrooms

Swimming pool

Tennis court

Large kitchen

Lounge

Family room

Study

5 bathrooms

Utility room

Barn garage

Barn Animals

20 acres minimum

Wood

Stream

Lake

**Animals**

Chickens

Ducks

Goats

Cows

Horses

               "Okay did I miss anything house wise, leave animals we'll add 'em when we acquire 'em." Will stated.

               "Gym." Bret stated firmly.

               "Workshop." Nikita was equally as firm.

               "Games room, play room." Jay added.

               "Okay………You do know that getting all that in one house for no money is highly unlikely." Will gently pointed out. "Kids you will definitely end up sharing."

               The children looked at each other and shrugged.

               "We know Mom, but it's a want list right." Cassidy reminded her,

               "Yeah, okay as well as the animals we'll be growing our own fruit and veg; and hopefully have our own wood of sustainable trees for building and firewood."

               "Will call Logan, he said he'd ask around about a suitable property." Alec reminded her.

               "That was only a couple of days ago." Will replied.

               "Hey, he's good at that kind of thing and he knows it's a rush job." Alec responded.

               "When you're right your right." Will muttered as she dialled Logan's number.  "Hey Logan, yeah we're gonna be in Canada in about twenty to thirty minutes." Listens. "You found a house, I'll put you on speaker, okay Logan go ahead tell us about it."

               "Hi everyone, okay well its in New Brunswick, it's almost a three and a half hour drive to the nearest town, has 128 acres with woods, streams, a small lake, ponds meadows and grazing land; Chicken shed and large coop; Duck shed, pond and large coop; a large workshop; it has two large barns one with a tack room; a large vehicle barn that will easily accommodate the motor home and a four car garage." Logan paused as the kids started yelling and jumping up and down.

              "AAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEE!" Will let out her ear piercing howl again.

               This stopped the kids antics and she indicated that they should sit down again, they swiftly did so, the X6s' looked slightly embarrassed, Will shook her head slightly and smiled at them.

               "Logan that was Will howling, it's the only way sometimes to get the kids attention." Alec explained.

               "Oh uh right….. um okay onto the house…The ground floor has a two story entrance hall with two staircases leading to the second floor; two washrooms; large kitchen; utility room; pantry; formal dining room; mud rooms at front and back entrances; study; library; formal living room; huge family room; games room; playroom; gym; sauna; hot tub; and twelve meter long indoor pool." Logan paused for breath.

               Silence in the motor home.

               "The first floor has the master suite which contains a large bedroom; lounge; bathroom and two walk in wardrobes and dressing rooms; Four bedrooms with en suite bathrooms. The loft floor contains: three bedrooms with en suite shower rooms; four other bedrooms and two bathrooms."  

               All Logan could hear was the dogs breathing.

               "It's fully furnished. All farm equipment is supplied including livestock a neighbour is currently popping in each day to care for them, since there are no farm hands. There's also a bunk house for farm hands and four one to two bedroom cabins. It's ready and waiting for you to move in." Logan finished telling them.

               The children were sat in stunned silence as all their dreams for the house came true.

               "Wow Logan how on Earth did you find it, it's perfect!" Will told him ecstatically grinning. "That must have cost a fortune." She added in a slightly worried tone.

               "Actually it was left by a reclusive, eccentric and rich man, he has no close living relatives, you're the only kin his lawyer could find, according to the probate office you are to be granted legal possession of the farm and the bank account of Josiah Trevelyn as soon as you arrive, I've sent a copy of everything you need to know to your laptop, including exact details on the house." Logan reassured them.

               "Logan how can I ever thank you?" Will asked sincerely. "Add us to your list of safe havens for transgenics okay, not just as an emergency refuge, I'm happy to take in more kids or adults."

               "Will you are the one whose doing me a favour not the other way around." Sound of a pager beeping. "I've got to go, bye!" Logan hung up.

               "Open the file Will." Alec ordered coming into the body of the motor home, he had parked whilst Logan talked, not wanting to miss the first look at his families new home.

               Will swiftly complied and soon they were all admiring the photographs of the property.

               "Horses!" Cooper yelled clapping his hands. "Now I just need to learn how to ride."

               "I'll teach you all how to." Will promised. "I'll make horse riding part of your school syllabus." 

               "School!" Jay yelped pouting.

               "Yes school!" Will replied firmly. "No child of mine is going to be raised a backwoods redneck! The subject is not up for debate!"

               The transgenic children did not get why Jay was upset.

               "What's wrong with school?" Cassidy asked puzzled.

               "It's boring and you have dumb teachers and you have to be nice to them and the dumb kids!" Jay informed his siblings still pouting.

               "Which is why I will be home schooling you." Will told them.

               "Wh… you will cool!" Jay replied and started grinning. "Home school will be so much fun, with you as our teacher we'll learn loads of cool stuff like the easiest way to kill someone."

               Alec started to have hysterics at this. "So like his daddy!"

               "I will be teaching you how to defend yourselves and others, I'll make sure that you learn every useful skill that I possess." Will told her children ignoring the still laughing Alec.

               13:02pm

               The motor home was finally about to reach the boarder

               "Now we see if our ID's were worth all those Bothan lives." Alec muttered to himself, misquoting Return of The Jedi. "Do or do not there is no try." He then called to the others, all of whom were grinning having got the references.  "Okay kids everyone but Jay go and hide, Will you ready to ask the boarder guard dogs to ignore the kids?" Alec added.

                "Already done little brother." She told him grinning as she and Jay settled themselves into the cab.

               "You can communicate from a couple of hundred metres?" Alec asked astonished.

               "Yep." Will replied.

               The motor home slowly crawled along in the long line of traffic headed into Canada.

When they finally reached the boarder their papers were given a cursory glance and the guard dogs sniffed around inside, but made no indication of finding anything amiss. They were quickly waved through and Will telepathically thanked the dogs who wished her and her pack well.

               14:31pm.

               QuebecCanada.

               Will waited until they were a mile away from the boarder then told the kids that it was safe to come out.  "Okay kids out you come!" She called.

               Jay undid his seatbelt and joined his siblings in the back, he turned on the laptop and they were soon pouring over the house plans again, this time deciding who would have each room rather than just marvelling at their new home.

               "Leave one of the bedrooms with an en suite bathroom as my room!" Alec ordered them.

               "Okay!" Bret yelled back. "Rob, Ry you want this large room in the loft right?" 

               "Yes please." The twins simultaneously answered. 

               Nikita marked that room as theirs on the plan. "Mom are you gonna get another computer with a printer scanner etcetera?" 

               "Check the house's contents list Nik." Will called. "See if there's already one on there."

               "Contents list? We only read the livestock one!" Cooper replied.

               Nikita called up the house contents list, quickly scrolled through it and grinned. "It says that there are two PCs and one laptop!"

               "Cool what else does it say?" Jay asked the others echoing him.

               15:28pm.

               They pulled into Montreal.      

    

                "Will I'll call the guy who offered to fly me partway back to Seattle and tell him that I'll need the flight in a few days." Alec told her and the kids he grinned. "I want to see this house, since I get a half share as your brother." He stated referring to the lie that Logan had maintained for the probate lawyers.

               "Cool!" Jay yelled and the other kids agreed. 

               "Will you want to get some more food, I'll mind the animals." Alec stated still grinning.

               "Yeah, we do need more fresh stuff and to launder some clothes." Will replied. "Don't worry Alec there'll be plenty of stuff for you to use when you cook dinner." She grinned.

               "Damn I was hoping you had forgotten about my lesson!" He groaned.

               "The best way to someone's heart is through their stomach." Will told him patting his arm.

               "No it's not it's through the ribcage!" Cooper argued then blushed realising what she meant.

               Will stood on tiptoe, ruffled his hair and grinned at him. "Yep you're right, but wrong context!" She looked at the kids. "You all want to come shopping with me?"

               They all confirmed that they did and soon they were warmly dressed and ready to go.

               18:39 pm.

               They returned from their shopping trip and slight exploration of the city, Will having decided that the kids should see it.

               "Uncle Alec Mom took us to a neat museum!" The twins yelled dropping their bags as they pounced on him as soon as they entered the motor home. 

               Laughing Alec carried the two excitedly chatting girls out of the way, so that the others could enter the motor home and unpack the shopping.

               Will laughing. "Kids I'll unpack while you all tell Alec about our site seeing."

               With calls of thanks the kids all dumped their bags and all talking at once began to fill Alec in on what they saw.

               "One at a time guys one at a time!" Alec told them laughing as he sat down with the twins on his lap.

               For over an hour the kids excitedly told Alec about all they had seen.

               19:44 pm.

                Everyone was hungry so Will decided to let Alec off the hook and they had a party style tea with rolls; cakes; chips etcetera.

               20:02 pm.

               They topped up the gas and alcohol tanks and set off again, wanting to get to New Brunswick and take possession of their new home as soon as possible.

               The next two hours were taken up with lively discussions on how each of the children would decorate their rooms. Wanting to be up bright and early the next day none of the kids complained when Will announced that it was time for bed, they didn't even mind that there hadn't 

been time to tell them a story.

               **Day Seven.******

****

               5:03am

****

               The kids woke Will up bright and early. She quickly started making up batches of pancakes as they excitedly discussed their new home and more ideas that they had had for their rooms and the playroom.

               Will served the kids and ate her toast after the kids had finished their breakfast she made up a huge batch of pancakes for Alec, he swiftly pulled over and Will took over the driving duties after she'd walked the dogs, the kids were too engrossed in their discussions, she also fed the dogs and cats.

               New Brunswick

               Town nearest the Wolfe's new home.

               13:34 pm.

                The family had just finished their lunch of sandwiches when they finally arrived in the town where Will and Alec were to sign some papers and pick up the keys to the house. 

               The kids played in the park whilst Will and Alec spoke with the probate lawyer Mr. Anderson easily making him believe that they were exactly who Logan had portrayed them to be.

They could see the children from the lawyer's office window.

               "Well everything is in order, Mrs. Wolfe, Mr. Newman welcome to MacGregorsville." The elderly lawyer spoke with genuine warmth. "I'm not surprised to hear that you hadn't known of him, that he had had a feud with his third cousin, your grandfather and broken off all contact. Well mustn't speak ill of the dead." He smiled at Will and Alec. "I expect the youngsters are keen to see their new home."

               "Very." Will replied smiling. "They've been planning what to do with their rooms ever since we heard."

               The three of them left the office and walked over to the park.

               "Well I can tell you that everyone was mighty pleased when they learnt that a family with eight kids had inherited the place." Mr. Anderson informed them. 

               "I won't be staying I have a job that I need to get back to." Alec told him smiling. "I'll just stay a few days to see Will and the kids settled in."

               "Yes, we wondered if you'd both be staying, the addition of nine people is a great boost to the town." Mr. Anderson replied smiling. "It's a long bus journey from your place to the neighbouring town where a lot of our youngsters go to school, a lot of the kids that live further out are home schooled."

               "That's what Mom plans to do with us Sir." Bret stated as he and the others came over to the adults. 

               The children lined up in order of age, the twins were holding the dogs leads.

               "Children I'd like you to meet Mr. Anderson, Mr. Anderson my children." Will introduced them. 

               Each put out their hand when Will said their name and politely shook the elderly lawyers hand and said hello.

               Mr. Anderson was obviously impressed by the entire family.  "Well I won't hold you up any longer, I know you want to get to the house and settled in." He handed Alec both sets of house keys and smiled as the children each bid him a polite farewell then raced for the motor home.

               "Thank you." Alec said as he took the keys and shook Mr. Anderson's hand.

               "Now remember if you have any problems or just want me to introduce you to the locals you can call me, if I'm not there my dear wife will be only to willing to help." Mr. Anderson reiterated as Will shook his hand.

               "Thank you Sir, you've been so kind." Will replied genuinely liking the old man her wolf instincts said that he was completely trustworthy.

               "You better hurry after the youngsters, even well behaved children like yours are bound to start getting impatient." Mr. Anderson advised.

               Both transgenics nodded bid him farewell and joined the kids in the motor home.

               17:50pm.

               They finally pulled up in front of the house, the motor home had barely stopped before the kids leapt out and raced to the front door, the dogs with them barking madly as they caught the children's excitement.  Will and Alec got out of the motor home and moved to the front door at a more sedate pace.

               "C'mon!" Jay ordered. "Open it open it!"

               The other kids echoed this command.

               "Hey the house isn't going anywhere." Alec responded laughing as he pulled out the keys, he handed the spare set to Will then opened the door. "Hey you can tell that people have been airing the house and cleaning it."

               "Yeah." Will agreed as both she and Alec followed the kids inside.

               The family spent the next couple of hours exploring the house, barns and the land nearest the house, they made friends with all the animals, including the six dogs and eight cats that came with the place, luckily all the farm animals got on with the new animals.

                20:04 pm.

               "Okay guys, we need to start transferring our stuff from the motor home!" Will called standing in the courtyard at the back of the house.

               The kids and Alec raced over from wherever they had been exploring.

               22:34pm.

               After a supper of baked beans and poached eggs on toast, the eggs were from their hens, they all tumbled exhausted into bed in their new rooms.

               **Day Ten**

****

               23:04pm

               The kids had awoken at around 4:46am and had decided to wake Will and Alec so they could begin reorganizing the furniture in their rooms, trying to reason with them that since they'd be removing the furniture from each room before they painted it, so they should organize the furniture as it was replaced did not work, the kids wanted to design their bedrooms now that minute.

               Luckily Will had the bright idea of using paper, she persuaded the kids that drawing a plan of each room, then measuring the furniture and cutting out pieces of paper to scale was the sensible option and after a little sweet talking and bribery the kids finally agreed.

               They worked on the paper plans and by lunch time all eight were happy with their plans for their rooms.

               After lunch Will spent the next few hours teaching the children and Alec how to ride.

               Alec cooked an edible dinner for everyone, following a recipe in one of the houses cook books and with Will's helpful suggestions and quick response before he did anything dumb. 

               While the adults cooked the kids had watched a movie from the immense collection they had inherited.

               The kids were in bed and fast asleep, totally worn out by their long and exciting day. Will and Alec were seated in the lounge, Will was sipping a mug of cocoa, Alec had a mug of coffee.

               "So Will who taught you to ride and all about looking after horses?" Alec asked curiously. "That wasn't on my curriculum."

               Will shrugged her right shoulder and thought for a few moments before answering.  "Well I became fascinated with horses when I was about eighteen months and a couple of months after Sandemann sterilised me, Deck signed me up for riding lessons at a stable about fifty miles from the base, whenever I was in Wyoming Deck or my carer took me to the lessons." Will grinned at pleasant memories.  

               "Deck pretended to be my dad and actually behaved like a loving father rather than my C.O. he was very patient with all the retelling of what I did and about taking me to shows. When I won he acted like the proud father and he never made the lessons seem like Manticore lessons." 

               "Wait a minute, Deck Colonel Lydecker, Director of Manticore, hard nosed bastard, signed you up for riding lessons!" Alec was incredulous. "I didn't have much to do with him 'cause he was based in Wyoming…. But that still does not sound like him!"

               Will shrugged again. "By the time you X5's were born he was pretty frustrated, I mean I had turned out exactly as he and Sandemann wanted, but all the other X's failed until you X5's were born, if you had been a failure as well, the project would have been shut down."

               "You never said that in your debriefing." Alec stated puzzled by the omission.

               "Alec the kids need to work with you X5's and I didn't want any resentment, you know like if you'd failed I wouldn't have been born been a soldier and now being hunted kind of thing." Will patiently explained.  

               "Yeah good point." He replied. "Still can't picture Lydecker playing the loving parent though."

               "Oh he could be very protective of me." Will told him.

               "So protective he let you be sterilised." Alec replied sarcastically.

               Will got a far away look in her eyes.  "A few days after the operation I awoke to arguing, Sandemann had seen Deck return home from his trip to one of the other bases, so he came to see him and told him what he had done."  Will paused lost in her memories of that night.

               "I heard yelling so crept to the landing to investigate and from my hiding place I saw and heard Deck in complete meltdown, yelling words in connection to me, my sterilisation, that I wouldn't understand their meaning of until about five years later, he was so mad at Sandemann that he actually threw a punch, it connected and Deck seized the advantage and went in for the kill."

               Will paused and shrugged her right shoulder.  "I didn't see it then, but with what I learnt later from experience, he would have killed Sandemann he was so incensed, Sandemann used his Familiar abilities and knocked Deck out, he then left him unconscious on the floor and went home."

               Again she paused as she remembered.  "I crept from my hiding place and got a cushion and blanket and made Deck comfortable, then stayed with him, curled up next to him until he awoke the next day. Relations between them were frosty to say the least for the next year or so, and Deck never completely trusted him again."

               Alec sat in stunned silence at this revelation he did not speak for a few minutes.

                "I can see why you got mad at me in T.C." He told her quietly. "Why you think of him as your father, he acted like a father to you even taking your side against Sandemann."

               "Yes, I will always consider him to be my father, I know that to the Wyoming X5's he was a complete bastard and I did tell him exactly how much I despised his shooting Eva." Will paused as she flashed back to that fateful night and the next morning when she learnt what had happened. 

               "I was seventeen and I had my first and only teenage tantrum with him over Eva's death, he actually stood there and let me hurl insults at him, he took all my verbal abuse for over four and a half hours." Will paused and grinned at Alec suddenly.  "I never repeated an insult and I used oh twenty odd languages. When I finally shut up, he just looked at me no lectures and asked me if I felt better." Will shook her head at the memory.

               "That's why he figured it was you who freed Zack." Alec stated.

                "Yes." Will replied as she stood up and stretched. "I'm going to bed, goodnight Alec." She kissed him on the head as she walked past.

               Alec stayed up a while longer pondering on what he had just learnt, trying to picture Deck so incensed that he would hit Sandemann, try to kill him and even more odd, taking a four and a half hour tantrum from Will were she did nothing but hurl insults at him and all he did was ask her if she felt better, no lectures no punishments, just a fatherly kind of a response.

               Alec shook his head in disbelief at the thought and the imagery it conjured up. 

               **Day Eleven**

               The kids had not awoken quite so early, and had let the adults sleep until 6:33am, before they literally hauled them out of bed and reminded them that they had promised to buy paint today and decorate and rearrange their rooms, the kids had even managed to shift a lot of the smaller items of furniture, without causing enough of a disturbance to awaken the two adult transgenics.

               Late evening.

                Family room.

               Everyone was relaxing in the family room after dinner, tired from their busy day of decorating, they had managed to paint all the occupied bedrooms; including the one that Alec had claimed; and the only guest bedroom that no one liked the colour scheme for, tomorrow they planned to return the furniture and organize it to everyone's own taste. 

               The family room's sofa beds were pulled out and made up as were the air mattresses, all the kids would spending the night in there, while Will and Alec used the two guest bedrooms, that had not needed redecorating.

               Robyn and Ryanne wandered over to the upright piano that sat in a corner of the room and lifted the lid, they started to play Chopsticks, Danny and Jay joined them and soon all four were playing the tune, the older kids just lounged on the sofa beds.

               When the twins started to play Alec drew in a sharp breath and swiftly left the room, Will heard this and concerned by his reaction, she followed him to his temporary room.

               Alec was sitting on the bed lost in thought, Will went into the room, gently shutting the door behind her, she then sat down next to Alec, he ignored her lost in his memories.

               "What's wrong?" Will gently asked him after a couple of minutes.

               Alec didn't speak for two minutes, then in a rush he poured out what had happened on one of his missions, how he had fallen in love with the target's daughter and how he had killed her, been responsible for the coma, that she finally died from a few months earlier.

               As soon as he started to speak Will pulled him into a fierce embrace, he rested his head upon her shoulder and poured out his heart, told her everything he remembered about that fateful mission, and what had occurred a few months ago, while she gently rocked him. 

                Alec pulled himself from Will's tender hug.  "I'll leave tomorrow." He stated.

               "What? Why?" Will asked confused and concerned.

               "I just told you I killed the only person I loved before you and the kids." Alec replied in a pained tone.

               "What so you plan to leave early in case you kill us?" Will was incredulous.

               "Yes." Alec stated looking stubborn.

               "Alec don't be an idiot!" Will told him. "You did not kill Rachel, it was an accident!"

               "If I hadn't told ……" Alec started.

               "It was an accident." Will interrupted him speaking firmly. "Alec, you are not going to live in guilt for the rest of your life over an unfortunate accident."

               "But…."

               "No buts!" Will growled at him. "You did not set out to harm her, you were trying to protect her from being hurt, by telling her of your mission, so that she could warn her father, what happened next was an accident, and I will not have you blaming yourself for an accident!"

               "You wouldn't underst…." Alec started then trailed off remembering Will's husband. "Damn Will I'm sorry of course you would."

               Will shook her head and put her arms back around Alec.  "No Alec you can't compare John to Rachel, they're two totally different scenarios." Will replied. "John was C.I.A he knew he could be killed, and the moment he decided to turn traitor, he signed his own death warrant, he was a walking dead man for fourteen years."

               Alec and Will were both silent for a few moments Alec just sat in her embrace, thinking about what she had said.

               "Will your debriefing said that you knew know the techniques Manticore used to block memories….."

               "No Alec I won't block the memories." Will gently interrupted placing a finger on his lips when he was about to speak again. "If the memories resurfaced once, they will do so again, Manticore should not have blocked them to begin with, they should have had you work through them, that way, you would be able to remember Rachel without feelings of misplaced guilt."

               "But….."

               "Of course they couldn't because then you would have put the blame firmly where it belongs with Manticore." Will bluntly stated interrupting him again.  "You are going to tell me again over the next few days what you did with Rachel and why you loved her….. none of the mission stuff, it's unimportant compared to your falling in love."

               Will pulled out of the embrace and looked Alec in the eyes, she smiled gently at him.

               "A lot of people believe, myself included, that for as long as someone remembers you, then you never truly die, so we will remember Rachel together, we will honour her by remembering her as the vibrant person you described, remembering her with guilt does you both a disservice, she was a good person, her memory should only be associated with good thoughts." Will gently but firmly ordered him.

               Alec pondered Will's directive for about six minutes before finally realising that she made absolute sense, that Rachel would and should not be remembered with any bad connotations, that that truly did a disservice to the loving girl he had known, he finally nodded his agreement.

               Will smiled gently at him. "So tell me again about the moment that you first saw her."

               **Day Fourteen**

****

               Alec stayed with them for four extra days, he had managed to okay the extra time with Normal.

               Will and Alec had spoken everyday of Rachel and each time it got easier for Alec, he had decided to do as Will had ordered and let go of the guilt, to only remember Rachel as the carefree loving young woman with whom he had fallen in love. Just as Will had also ordered he put the blame for her death squarely where it had always belonged, with Manticore.

               He spent the days helping to redecorate the entire house to the families taste. He then headed back to Montreal on a motor bike that they had found in the garage and that Nikita soon had working perfectly and looking great. 

               It was a very emotional farewell none of the children or Will wanted Alec to leave and he wanted to stay as well, after promising to return as soon as possible Alec started the bike and left for the first leg of his long journey back to Seattle.


	8. Chapter 8

11th to 23rd Nov 2003

Unwelcome Ties      By Western Blakehawke.

Set after LATR.  2021.

Ames meets the first human looking transgenic. Alec is reunited with a sibling and takes a road trip.

**Chapter 8**

               A few weeks later.

               Ames entered the house put his briefcase down and shrugged off his coat swiftly putting it away.

               "Dad!" Ray yelled as he raced down the stairs and launched himself at his father from five stairs up. 

              Ames easily caught him and hugged him, laughter sounded from behind them, Ames turned as Will walked over to them. 

                "Hey Will." He greeted her smiling.  He put down a wriggling Ray and embraced Will then tenderly kissed her on the lips.

               "Dad I'm working on a rocket, I'll show you it after you've had supper." Ray told him then knowing that he had lost his father's attention for the moment raced back upstairs.

               Will grinned at Ames. "Better let me go, unless you want to eat burnt food."

               Ames reluctantly released her and they entered the kitchen, Will went back to cooking and Ames came and stood behind her and nuzzled her neck. "I'm hungry, but not for food." He whispered throatily and suggestively in her ear.

               "Food first, fun later." Will replied laughing. 

               Later

               Bedroom.

               Ames and Will had just made love and had fallen into an exhausted sleep, Will was lying half covering Ames, her head rested upon his chest, he was holding her possessively.

               Morning.

               Will and Ames were awakened by Ray's ecstatic yell and excited chatter, they looked at each other and swiftly hauled on their night clothes, Will grabbed Ames dark green silk pyjama jacket, quickly buttoning it, while Ames hauled on the bottoms, they then both dove back into their warm super king size bed. Just in time as Alec stormed into the room.            

               "Will how could you! Sleeping with the enemy!"

               "Sleep? We don't sleep much!" Ames replied smiling smugly.

               Ray had followed Alec into his parent's bedroom.

               "Ray go and get your breakfast." Will ordered him.

               "But……" Ray started to argue.

               Ames cut him off. "Ray do as you mother says."             

               Phone rings.

               Ames awoke momentarily disoriented he looked around his bed and was incredibly relieved to see that the only wolf in it was Howler, Ray's soft toy.  "Dreaming about me and that freak……… us……… Never happen!" He snarled at himself then finally grabbed the cell phone from the nightstand and answered it. 

              "White!" He snapped. _I need a shower! Damn timing! Couldn't have woken me before I dreamt I slept with 378! _

               "Dad!" 

               "Ray?!" Ames said in astonishment. _I'm still dreaming!_

               A short time earlier.

               2:47amNew Brunswick.

               23:47pmSeattle.

               Wolfe household.

                Family room.

               Will had allowed the children to stay up, they were having a slumber party, they had pumped up the air mattresses and converted the sofas into beds all so that a phone call could be made on the stroke of midnight Seattle time. 

               The kids and Will had all taken a nap for two hours that afternoon to be prepared for the long night ahead.

                There was a real log fire burning in the huge fireplace in the huge room. 

               Will was also at the party, they had snacks and had been watching all the Indiana Jones films back to back, the last film would finish in eleven minutes, giving Will a couple minutes to get the kids ready then dial the number.  

               Will was seated next to Jay, they had the satellite phone between them on a sofa bed, the other kids were laying on the mattresses and sofas, accompanied by soft toys and all the dogs and cats.

               The films end credits began to roll and Cooper since he was nearest turned the DVD off and also the huge widescreen television. The kids all turned to look at Jay and Will, with a minute to go Will dialled the number and when it began to ring handed the phone to Jay.  The other kids were quite willing to only hear Jay's side of the conversation.

               Ames had finally picked up the phone.

               "Dad!" Jay yelled as soon as his father answered White.

               Midnight in Seattle.

               "Happy birthday Daddy!" Ray yelled. "Everyone wants to say happy birthday!"

               "Happy birthday!" Eight voices chorused over the phone.

               Ames glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. 00:00am.

                "Ray?" Ames is stunned. _I've got to still be dreaming Ray and eight strangers calling me up on the stroke of __midnight__ to wish me a happy birthday._

"Yes Dad." 

               "Who just wished me a happy birthday?" Ames asked. _The answer will tell me if I'm dreaming or not! No way would a freak if that's who 452 gave my son to or Rebecca would let Ray call me! Not even on my birthday!_

  "That was Mom and my siblings." Ray replied. "Uh don't be mad but they're transgenics and they're cool and I love them."

               "Okay that's nice." Ames replied. _I'm definitely dreaming._

"I told Mom you'd be cool!"

               "Mom?" Ames queried. _I hope I'm dreaming!_

               "Yeah she let us stay up so I could call you! She said that Aunt Becky was wrong, that I'm not allowed to see you, but I can talk to you on the phone whenever I like!" Ray told him.

               "Mom?" Ames repeated. _Am I awake or dreaming, I don't feel pain so pinching myself is out._

  "Yeah she came and got me after Aunt Becky was killed in a car crash!" Ray told him.

               _It's Ray! "Are you okay?" Ames asked concerned._

               "I'm fine Daddy I wasn't in the car, I'd just got out." Ray replied. "Mom wants to speak to you!"

               "Designation!" Ames snapped as soon as he heard different breathing on the phone line. _Who are you?_

  "You know Agent White being polite wouldn't kill you." A female told him obviously amused.

               "3 7 8." He ground out recognizing her voice instantly. 

               Ames involuntarily flashed to his dream of him and Will in bed together just after they had obviously fallen asleep after sex and to what his dream self had said to 494 and his calling 378 Ray's mother. _Damn it! Why did I have to dream of her, not of killing her which is normal but…… Why do I have to have a blasted eidetic memory!_

    "Yes." 378 replied still sounding amused.  "Before you yell at me Agent White, I had to make the local authorities believe that I was Ray's mother for them to hand him over to me." 

               Silence

               The only way Will knew that Ames was still there was because she could hear his breathing.

               _I don't believe it! The dream she had Ray and she's got him for real!  Ames thought shocked._

               "Ray's fine, he's safe and happy." 378 carried on speaking. "I'll raise him with full knowledge of his Familiar heritage, of the Transgenics and the man who created us, you'll have to relate your family history in your phone conversations since I only know you and Ray and nothing about your family."  

               Still silence. 

              _Wait she does know my family? Heck she calls C.J her brother! She's not going to tell Ray that his grandfather created her and the others? Why?_

               "I won't sway his opinion either way, just teach him the facts, he can make up his own mind." 378 informed him, obviously meaning every word.

                Still silence 

                _She means it! She means everything she's saying! Was Ames incredulous thought._

               "Agent White! Ames! Say something! Yell something!" 378 ordered. "Damn it! Are you okay you seem to be taking the fact that I've got Ray and he calls me Mom and has transgenic siblings incredibly well, too well in fact, what have you done with the real Ames White?" 

             "You let Ray call me! You said he can call me anytime!" Ames paused. "'Til tonight I only had my belief in Ray's strength to convince me he was alive. You allowed him to call me!" _He's alive! Thank the Goddess! He's alive!_

              "How could I refuse him……" 378 told him, she paused. "When this business is sorted either way, I'll let you have him back!" 

               "Thank you." Ames quietly replied true sincerity in his voice. _He's safe! He's alive!_

               Sounds of the phone changing hands.

               "Dad I've got an uncle too!" Ray told him ecstatically. 

               "Uncle?" Ames repeated narrowing his eyes as he thought of the other sort of uncle. _She's exposing my son to her fancy man!_

"Yep Alec Mom's younger brother! He came with Mom to collect me, he's really cool, he went back to Seattle though and hasn't been able to visit." Ray told him obviously downcast at not seeing this uncle.

               "What's his number?" Ames asked with a sinking feeling. _Please don't let it be 494!_

               "Um, 494, Dad can you talk to Mom, tell her it's okay for me to imitate Uncle Alec, she told me to quit pouting last week, that she was fed up of me copying Uncle Alec, that one of him is more than enough and she threatened to take away my new bike!" Ray whined. "She said that you'd also find it annoying! Dad tell her she's wrong!"

               Sounds of the phone changing hands again.

               Ames is shocked to silence again. _My son's copying 494!_

 "Ames don't worry threatening to take away the bike curbed his enthusiasm for copying Alec." 378 calmly stated.

               "Good I'll back you to the hilt on this, put Ray back on!" Ames ordered rolling his eyes. _Kids!_

               "Dad did you…"

               "Sorry Ray 378's….." Ames started.

               "Who's 378?" Ray interrupted confused.

               "Uh….. Will." Ames said forcing himself not to snap the name. _I am not going to call her your mother! Don't ask me for more clarification!_

"Oh Mom." Ray replied.

               "Well she's right, Ray I'm sorry but you have to quit acting like 494…..Alec!" Ames spoke quickly hating having to side with a transgenic against his son. 

               "But Daaaaad!" Ray whined.

               "No buts!" Ames sternly cut off the rest of the protest that he knew was coming, he could hear the sounds of someone probably 378, breathing, along with Ray.

               "Hey pouting." 378's amused voice came over the phone. "Better! Now you look just like your dad, you definitely inherited his cute glare!"

               _Cute glare? She finds my glare cute! It's supposed to be intimidating! Ames glared at the stuffed wolf on his bed._

               "Daaaaad!" Ray whined. "You want to kill transgenics! Why are you siding with one!"

               _Good point! "Yes I want to kill transgenics that's why I don't want you imitating one." Ames patiently told his son._

               "Be right back kids."  Ames heard 378 say in the background then he heard a door close.

               "Oh right I hadn't thought of that." Ray replied downcast then brightened. "Hey you didn't get mad when you heard I had a transgenic Mom, siblings and uncle."

               Ames was silent wondering what new shock his son had in store for him. _What now!_

              "Well Uncle Alec made a joke when we asked Mom to sing for us like Maria in the Sound of Music, we watched it the night before. Anyway Uncle Alec said that if Mom's Maria, and us kids are the Von Trapp children, that that makes you Captain Von Trapp and that Mom and you should get married to get you off the transgenics backs! We, us kids all thought it was and is a great idea!" Ray enthusiastically told his father. "

               Ames is shell shocked at the idea. _That's it 494 dies slow!_

    "Dad?" 

               Shocked silence.

               "Daddy?"

               "What's wrong honey?" Ames heard 378 enter the room and ask his son.

               "Dad went silent." 

               "He's still there I can hear his breathing." 378 stated. "What did you say to him?"

               "I only told him about Uncle Alec's cool suggestion, that he and you should get married." Ray replied.

               "I told you not to tell him after Alec made that dumb joke and you wanted to call Ames and ask him!" 378 told his son agitated.  "Damn it! Why'd I ignore my instincts! They told me you guys were lying when you said you'd drop the subject! Idiot! I was so happy you dropped the preposterous idea that I ignored my instinct for when I'm being conned!" She yelled at his son and her children.

               "But you said that you would marry him if Dad agreed!" Ray stubbornly yelled back.

               Seven voices yelled their agreement with his son's statement.

               Ames just listened too shocked even to think.

               "I was still shell shocked." 378 replied icily, she had gotten a hold of her temper. "I would probably have agreed to marry Jabba the Hutt, just to shut you up!"

               "But like I said before you and Dad have so much in common you bo…." Ray started to wheedle.

               "I remember what you said, eidetic memory remember. I also remember telling you that neither myself or your father is suicidal and not to mention the stupid idea to him because that coupled with you having and loving having transgenic kin would probably kill him!" 378 growled.

               "I told him and he's not dead you said you could hear him breathing!" Ray pointed out.

               "Bed time!" 378 ordered losing patience.

               "But Moooom!" Ray whined.

               "Don't push me Ray, I am very seriously thinking of sending you all to boarding schools in England!" 378 growled. "Trust me I was sent to one as part of a dumb assignment and it was bad!"

               Sounds of grumbling and children leaving the room.

               Ames shifted position, 378 heard.

               "You okay?" 378 asked concern evident in her voice.

               "I want to talk to Daddy!" Ray said he had stubbornly refused to budge. "Dad Mom…."

               Ames finally recovered enough to speak.  "She's right on the marriage front Ray it wouldn't work. She's also right on it being time for you to be in bed." His tone clearly said that he would brook no arguments.

               "Dad can you tell us a story, Mom tells really cool ones about Boba Fett, but I want to hear one of yours!" Ray pleaded.

               "Well okay….." Ames started to reply.

               "Go to the bathroom first kiddo." 378 interrupted him.

               "Great! Thanks Mom Dad!" Ray called and hurried to the bathroom.

               "Why?" Ames asked. _Why let me have phone time with Ray? Why agree to my telling him a story?_

"Because he misses your stories." 378 softly replied. "Ames do you mind if I stay and listen?"

               "Why you think I'm going to fill Ray's head with anti freak propaganda and persuade your kids to turn themselves in?" He asked sarcastically. _Reading bedtime stories to freaks? Damn! But Ray's formed an attachment to them and it'd upset him if I excluded them. _ With an effort Ames stopped himself from sighing.

               "No I've just never been told a bedtime story is all." Was 378's quiet and bitingly honest reply.

               Sounds of footsteps and excited chatter as eight children rushed into the room and got back into their beds.

               "Oh." Ames said startled at her simple and honest reply. "Sure you can stay." _She's odd even for a freak. Other transgenics try to hide their thoughts, feelings from me but she doesn't seem to care what she tells me!_

"Thanks!" 378 replied a smile evident in her voice. "Okay you're on speaker now."

               "Mom you can share our mattress." A pair young female voices offered.

               "Thanks but no sugas, I'll take an armchair I don't want to wake you when I leave." 378 gently replied and settled herself onto an armchair.

               "Alright if you're ready I'll begin." Ames told them. _I can't believe I'm doing this!_

Thirty seven minutes later.

               Ames finished  the story that he had made up and within moments the younger children were asleep, he could tell from the change in their breathing, he could also discern that their must be three others youngsters besides Ray, so that would make them X8's and the other four children must be X6s.

               The older children each quietly thanked Ames for the story with no prompting from 378, then settled down to sleep. 

               378 turned the phone off speaker and silently and swiftly exited the room, she carried the phone with her to her room.       

               She flopped onto her bed and got under the covers.  "What are you wearing?" 378 casually asked.

               "Black silk pyjama bot….. What?!" Ames answered automatically then realised what he was saying and is incredulous at her question. _Why'd I reply! Idiot!_

               378 dissolved into uncontrollable giggles.         

               "Damn it! 378 pull yourself together! …….. This isn't a sex line!" Ames snapped at her. _She's insane! My son is being mothered by a crazy person! No wonder she got on so well with C.J.! Wait a minute I'm calling her insane 'cause she's flirting with me….. _

378 stifled her giggle fit by a supreme effort of will. "Ah sorry Ames, I uh think I might have had too much sugar today."

               "Sugar?" Ames asked in confusion. _What the hell has sugar got to do with acting crazy?_

               "Yeah, don't the records say, X series go a bit loopy hyper if they consume too much in a day." 378 explained.

               "No that was not mentioned in the records that I've seen." Ames replied as he automatically filed away this new piece of data.  _Interesting._

               378 gently snorted.  "It should have been! Blasted things a blinking pain!" She growled. "Sandemann definitely knew, he tested me to see how much I could consume before it turned me loopy!"

               "But you still adore him anyway!" Ames replied sarcastically. _Stupid freak._

               "No! The only one of my adult kin who loves Sandemann is Joshua!" 378 archly informed him. "Even though he deserted him sixteen years ago! Is C.J still as enamoured?"

               "Yes!" Ames grouched. "That's why he tasered me and freed 452!" He snarled. _Stupid idiot, Ray could be safely in school instead of with 378!_

               "He tasered you and he's still breathing?" 378 asked in shock.

               "You said you knew our ways, you should know that we're not even allowed to kill the defectives!" Ames grumbled. "I shot him in the shoulder."

               "I remember that rule." 378 replied. "I'm surprised you didn't shoot him in the heart and say that one of the ordinaries jostled you, when you aimed for his shoulder, just as you squeezed the trigger, no way you could have changed the bullet's trajectory once it was fired."

               "Damn! You're right I could have said that and been believed!" Ames replied. "Damn I was so mad at him I wasn't thinking straight!"

               "Never mind, I'm sure you'll get another chance to accidentally kill him." 378 sincerely and non sarcastically comforted him.

               "Wait a minute aren't you supposed to protect C.J?" Ames suddenly recalled. _What's she up to?_

               "Well yeah, but I've got a downer on all younger brothers at the minute, cause I know that the kids are going to keep bugging me about Alec's stupid joke. It's all right for you, you'll only get it over the phone a few times a week from Ray, but I've got the eight brats living with me and I can't hang up on 'em!" 378 moaned. "You can guess how close I came to snapping Alec's neck!"

               "What stopped you?" Ames asked. _I'll kill him and enjoy doing so! Married!_

               "I'd never hear the end of it from the kin!" 378 groused. "We're not allowed to kill each other either, not even idiot siblings."

               "Yeah some rules are just plain dumb." Ames agreed. _Least Ray's with an intelligent freak!_

               "Ames, do you know if De.. Lydecker is alive?" 378 suddenly changed the subject.

               "Why?" Ames asked. _What does she want with Lydecker she'll be asking about fa.. Sandemann next!_

               "Remember I told you that I didn't have a parental bond with Sandemann…." 378 started to say.

               "You see Lydecker as your father." Ames finished quickly getting the idea.

               "Yep, so did the Familiars kill him because of all the digging he was doing into their business?" 378 asked then realising added. "Ooops bad choice of terminology considering he went to archaeological digs." 

               "They tried, whether he died is unknown, his car was forced off the road, driven into a river and his body was never found. His status is unknown." Ames replied. _Why did I tell her that? I could have lied said I didn't know!_

 "Thanks for the info." 378 replied genuinely appreciative that he had given her the data he had.  "I never actually thanked him for punching Sandemann, on my behalf when I was two." She unthinkingly added.

               Ames sat up in bed at this. "He punched my father?" 

               "What? Oh yeah, I knew the fight was about me but did not fully understand until a few years later." 378 distractedly replied. "I need coffee." She muttered. "Blasted sugar!"

               "3 7 8 why did Lydecker punch Sandemann?" Ames slowly ground out. _Tell me! I hate not knowing stuff!_

               "Oh uh, he got back from a trip to another base, I was two, I lived with him when I didn't travel with Sandemann, anyways Sandemann was waiting for him when he got home, I woke up at their arguing, and went to see what was happening, I hid and watched, Sandemann informed Deck that he had sterilised me, Deck was furious and threw a punch, it connected he moved in for the kill, didn't recognize that look until years later and Sandemann knocked him out. Their relationship never recovered Deck never completely trusted him again." 378 quickly replied as ordered, mind obviously not on the phone conversation.

               Ames is stunned by the answer, nowhere in her records was the fact that she had been sterilised mentioned.  _That's why she's letting me have contact with Ray even if it is only by phone! Why she said she would return him after the situation had been sorted one way or the other! Because my father had robbed her of the ability to have children, she won't keep my son from me even if it means her own death when the Coming happens. _ 

                "You should know that I didn't believe in love at first sight until I met your son." 378 spoke when Ames remained silent.      

                "What?!" Ames cried misinterpreting her meaning, because his mind was still on what she had just told him.             

                "Relax Ames I meant maternal love! I'll protect him with my life because I want to not because I was made too!" 378 fiercely him.

               The truth of her words was obvious to Ames.

               "You won't try and turn him against me?" Ames couldn't stop himself from asking.

               "Ames I'm not your ex why would I want to bad mouth you?" 378 asked in genuine surprise.

               "Because I'm trying to kill you and all your kin and because of what my father did to you!" Ames replied. _Why wouldn't you hate me?_

               "I don't blame you for what Sandemann did to me!" 378 stated.  "And as for killing my kin, I don't like you for doing so, but it's your job……."

               "What?" Ames was astounded yet again by the tiny transgenic.

               "C'mon Ames I was an assassin for sixteen years! I'm not a hypocrite!"  378 blunty informed him.

               "Yeah you would have been active for sixteen years if you started at thirteen." Ames stated recalling what Otto had told him. _She's been active longer than I have._

 "Yep! Heck I can even understand your killing Wendy." 378 unthinkingly added, her mind more on needing to drink a load of black coffee to curb her sugar cravings than on the conversation. 

               "What do you mean you can understand my killing Wendy?" Ames snapped. _What would you know about killing someone you had grown to love!_

"What?" 378 asked him. "Did I say that? Damn! I can't concentrate blasted sugar!"

               "Answer me!" Ames ordered.

               "Eighteen assignment date C.I.A operative see if double agent, ended up in our getting married, only got concrete proof seventeen months ago then I had to kill him." 378 blandly informed him, her mind was obviously elsewhere. "Oh yeah I was dumb enough to fall for him!"

               Silence

               _Ray was right we do have a lot in common…. Don't go there! Damn these dream flashbacks! I am not going to marry her! Let alone bed her!_

               "Hey Ames if you find Sandemann, let me know okay I want to yell at him. I'll return the favour." 378 vowed.

               "What makes you think I want to yell at him?" Ames asked. _Dumb question!_

               "You want a list?" 378 replied sarcastically.

               "No!" Ames snapped. _Why am I having a relatively civil conversation with a freak?_

"Ame…" 378 started to speak.

"I don't want to discuss the subject of my father with anyone and most certainly not with one of his freaks! One of the reasons why he left me!" He bitingly interrupted her.

               "Ames look at it this way, if he'd taken you with him, you'd either be in an asylum like C.J or, since you would have fought the Phalanx dead!" 378 told him.

               "This subject is closed!" Ames snarled.

               "Not yet it isn't I left the best point 'til last!" 378 snarled back. "Ray!"

               Ames was about to slam the phone down but stopped at the mention of his son. 

               "What about him!" He demanded. "If you're gonna renege on your word just because I snarled at you…..!"

               "Ames I'm part wolf snarling is normal!" 378 sarcastically replied.

               "I don't appreciate being called Jabba the Hutt!" Ames yelled still sore about that from weeks ago.

               "I have never called you Jabba the Hutt, I said you were Boba Fett!" 378 yelled.

               "With Ray you said you would have agreed to marry Jabba the Hutt if it would have shut them up!"  Ames snarled at her.

               "Right you idiot! I did not say you were Jabba!" 378 snarled back.

               "Yes you did you compared marrying me to marrying a huge slug!" He yelled indignantly.

               "Fine! See a perfectly reasonable comment in that context!" 378 growled at him.

               "It was not a perfectly reasonable comment!" Ames retorted not willing to let the subject drop.

               "Ames the only Star Wars character I have ever compared you with is Boba Fett, the guy I like enough to tell the kids stories about!" 378 yelled at him, and continued to growl.

               "Another thing I don't recall giving you permission to use my name!" He snapped.

               "What if I use your name I have power over you?" 378 burst out laughing at the notion. 

               "You're impossible!" Ames yelled.

               378 quit laughing. "So are you!"

               "What about Ray!" Ames pretty much thundered down the phone.

               "Geeez Ames could you yell a little louder I don't think I quite caught that!" 378 told him sarcastically.

               Ames growled.

               "Sexy growl!" 378 told him. She then sighed and reined in her temper.  "All I was going to add was that if Sandemann had taken you with him, then Ray would not have been born." She told him quietly. 

               "Oh!" Ames uttered temper evaporating. "I'd actually never thought of that." He stated honestly._ She's right!_

               "Yeah sometimes it takes an outsider to point out the obvious and I definitely think that Ray is worth far more than your father." 378 calmly replied.

               "That he is." Ames quietly yet intensely agreed.  _He's my life!_        

                "Ray knows he can call you whenever he wants, so let us know before you change your number." 378 reminded him.

               "Will do." Ames replied.

               "Good night Ames. Happy birthday! Fe'nos tol!" 378 said then she hung up.

               Ames looked at his cell phone for a few moments before putting it down. He pondered this new and totally unexpected development.

               "After the Coming could I let her and her transgenic kids live?" He found himself thinking aloud. "No the Conclave would never allow even one transgenic to live let alone eight. Even the fact that 378 passed the test at six and is fully instructed in our ways and will have taught them to her children….." 

               Paused deep in thought.   _She's protecting Ray, allowing me contact even if only by phone…………I owe her! I'll make sure that I'm the one to kill her and her children! I'll make their deaths quick and clean, as painless as possible, it's the only thing that I can do……..I'll take the Conclave's annoyance if they even care!_

               With that decided Ames shimmied under his covers and looked at Howler, Ray's stuffed wolf on the pillow next to his head. 

               _A wolf…. we both chose a wolf! He thought shaking his head and grinning. _I chose Howler to keep Ray company to be his confident, Sandemann chose a wolf to protect his sons and grandchildren. _Paused and thought. __I never thought I'd grin when I said thought his name after he betrayed me, but 378 was right, if I'd gone with him Ray would not exist, I'd rather have my son than my father any day. _

               He closed his eyes and pictured 378._ And thanks to father's wolf I know my son is alive! I have contact with him._ 378's face morphed to Ray's and Ames fell asleep, his first truly restful sleep since Ray's kidnapping. 

The End.

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